#I think there's actually a snip of dialogue I was playing with where one of the gestionnaires is like...infatuated with Eclair

[iaus]

2, 4, and 21 for gale 👀

2. Favorite canon thing about this character?

i'm so torn actually. because ngl i AM obsessed with the fact that he is literally a walking bomb and i LOVE that he has to feed on magic to keep from literally melting down. i think it's so fun i think they should've done more with it.

BUT i also love that gale's morals are... changeable. like. i think he's so (rightly) represented as this good character which is fun and i do love but i think in the pursuit to give him a Good ending where he's adjusted and has worked through his trauma that we forget that. you can fully have gale stay in an evil party AND THEN ROMANCE HIM. like. is it a threatening dialogue and high DC persuade check? yes... but he is willing to keep going. and when he is focused on something he wants? he's willing to do some horrid things to get what he wants. and i think that's something that's fun. god gale hurts me, yes, but. the implications of it... fascinating to me.

4. If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

hmmm. my first thought is it would be funny to stick him in any dragon age but datv but that seems a little low hanging fruit.

but tbh? i think scifi in general would be fun. there's a lot of different angles you could play that would be similar to his background. and it's close enough AND different enough to default setting that i wouldn't feel low-hanging fruit about it.

21. If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

i've been haunted by this question since my melatonin induced sleep last night... gale i think funnily enough is more of my stock writing character except he IS smarter than me BUT gale is a lot more vocal than characters i usually write. i'm soft-spoken irl (? or at least i think i am) so i feel like that generally lends to me writing soft-spoken or stoic characters who don't express much. gale's uh. very much NOT that.

so! it's a pretty fun challenge to go back over the dialogue i've written for him and have this long moment of. is this too. short. is there something i can add to it. and usually the answer is yes. i've gone from multiple lines that were like one word responses in my durge/gale fic and have had them balloon to a paragraph.

which is so funny because after writing gale i often have to go back through kore's dialogue and snip some stuff.

and something i don't like hmmm. i'm not certain... i was about to say i haven't written gale that much before remembering that my unpublished durge/gale is like. 18k and almost an even split in pov.

i think the main thing might just be that in the same vein that i like the challenge he brings to my dialogue i also dislike how open of a character he is. i think it stifles me because i'm so used to writing TWO non communicative bitches that now i have to pause and think about.

well. what would a bitch with communication skills say here. not that gale is the MASTER communicator. but. in comparison. but. yea. weird little fucking guy.

[inspiteallthedanger]

Any moments in get back that you think Peter Jackson took some creative liberties on? As someone who’s knowledge about this era of the Beatles is limited, I wanna know if there’s some storytelling in Get Back that’s exaggerated lol

Hi there anon and a good question.

There has been extensive debate around this - and I've made at least four posts focusing on exactly that (see below).

But, the short answer is: I don't think Pete has done much that substantively changes the meaning of most of the content. There are some places where it's clear that he's putting his own meaning over things, like where he's put Isn't It a Pity over where George has left etc. But, overall, I think he's done an amazing job. I don't want to take away from the sheer scale of the work he did and the amazing accomplishment of it. All my recent posts have shown how much I love the doc and I don't think it's done much but show how brilliant they are. I love it and I think he should get all the praise (and awards) for it.

But, that's not actually what you asked. So, there are four (somewhat) exceptions to the above:

The "then there were two scene" - what actually sets Paul off isn't that (in fact they all laugh about it). It's MLH asking would John come back (and leave Yoko) if Paul just asked. Paul says he “Can’t be bothered with all that” then does that sort of head shake and wells up. I can see why Pete doesn't think this changes it all that much? But to me it does.

The "Must we do this in public, Mr Lennon" scene. This is actually in response to John and Yoko starting to bitch about Apple not promoting Two Virgins well enough. Paul doesn't appear to give a shit about the drugs talk. He's also saying that 'in character' as a journalist. But, that said, both he and John are both being a bit pissy, despite the fact they've mostly been joking around before that topic.

George's comment after Paul plays Get Back that "musically, you know, it's great"... that's not what he's talking about. He's talking about another album by another group. Which does make sense, because I remember thinking that was a bit uncharistically nice of George, lol

The hug at the end of ep one... They're actually crowding around a camera and taking the piss out of MLH. That said... I don't think the meaning has changed? I think they are comforting each other, but they do that in the way they've always bonded: being Mean Girls and excluding people that aren't in their group. But. Still. I think he's playing fast and loose.

Other than that... Pete changes a lot of the dialogue. Again, not in meaning. But most of the conversations have been snipped, moved around and taken from different parts of the day, or for example he gives John's joke a new punchline. He also is very rarely showing them playing the songs that we're hearing. Does this matter? Certainly to some people it matters a great deal. To me, less so, because other than the above the meaning is the same. It’s just he takes out the waffle. But it’s really heavily edited. Also small thing: J&P aren’t alone in the lunchroom tapes. Why he says that I have no idea - Ringo, Linda and Yoko are all there. I think this is important to note because... that might explain why they’re not being totally frank with one another. 

I have to add this, but I can’t understand what (if anything) it means. Apparently Pete replaced George with someone else (Tony Richmond) in a very short scene - he digitally inserts someone over him, I mean. I'm taking Doug Sulpy's word for this, but it sounds so bonkers I side-eye it because there's no reason for Pete to do that. But, there's no reason for Doug to lie either. It changes exactly zero about the scene. But it is a weird, so I wanted to mention it. 

This also doesn't take into account what he's left out: namely Yoko. By all accounts Yoko does do and say a lot more than is implied by the doc. She makes a lot more effort to distract John and she does offer John advice on the music. We can hear her on an outtake of Oh! Darling interrupting to say her divorce has just come through, for example. Which... maybe it had, but I dunno. Seems like she also might have just wanted to stop J&P telling each other they'd die if the other left. But... who knows. I can see 1000000% why Pete did this in the current climate (not bringing down a fresh wave of hate on a very elderly, sick woman). But also, from an historical documentation context, it's probably not the right call.

I've got four more posts on this here, here, here and here (that last one you'll want to read all the replies on to get a good sense of the discussion). In case you can’t get enough of this. 

Anyway. There you go. Overall, I think Pete did a brilliant job but a close reading e.g. people's body language and exact responses to each other probably isn't a good idea. Unless you've always watched the tapes, a read all the transcripts, that is. 

Let me know if you have questions or comments or anything else everyone though!

[gatherround]

Just noticed for the first time how Eurydice’s arrival in Hadestown:

Is not dissimilar from Eurydice’s arrival to the underworld in Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice”

The arrival to the Underworld via the elevator is actually in the script for Ruhl’s Eurydice (in a truly marvelous set of stage directions):

(though side note, I do think everyone who stages it where she uses the umbrella to not get wet chooses a lovely image that misses the point)

Which reminds me that there are actually a number of snippets in Hadestown / Eurydice that remind me of each other, beyond just the obvious similarities of plot and shared allusions:

For one, the very first scene, which reminds me of “Wedding Song”:

Though of course there actually is a Wedding Song as well (yes, this has lyrics pulled from a song that exists outside the show):

And the subsequent “Promise”(s):

And, after she has died, a request to “wait for me”....

And then the return of the opening melody, and the fact that the melody that unlocks the gates of hell is wordless;

Though to be fair, these are very fleeting similarities, I find it especially interesting that both choose these same snips of language and imagery, because the stories are otherwise extremely different. The interpretations of Hades are vastly different. The image of the underworld itself. Most of the set design, elevator aside. Eurydice’s characterization. The existence/non-existence of Persephone. The reason Orpheus turns. And structurally, the shows choose completely opposite beats from the original myth to dwell upon. The longest sections in Sarah Ruhl’s play are after Eurydice dies and before Orpheus begins on his journey to the underworld (which lasts only a few lines of dialogue over vamped music in Hadestown), and the events between Eurydice and Orpheus after he turns (4 full pages!), and Eurydice once she arrives back in the underworld (14 more pages!), all of which only get an “It’s you / It’s me / Orpheus / Eurydice” and a quick trapdoor in Hadestown. On the flipside, Hadestown spends a long time, to the tune of maybe 5 or so songs oh my god I put that in as a guess, lmao in the Broadway version it’s actually EIGHTEEN songs, between Orpheus’ arrival in the underworld and Hades offering him the deal to leave with Eurydice; in Ruhl’s version, this takes less than a page and a half of dialogue, and is basically immediately what Hades offers -- compared to the 18 songs, it’s less than 18 lines of dialogue. These shows really could not have gone in more different directions with this myth -- which makes it all the more interesting to catch these little similarities and bits of shared language and imagery.

[setsuntamew]

So, Persona 5 Royal, huh?

Full disclosure: I had gotten about halfway through November on Wednesday and finished it out Saturday night, which took uhhh about 65-70 hours? Some of that was sitting there waiting for the PS4 controller to recharge or listening to music in the Thieves Den while eating, but I still feel like I need to own up to how extremely bad I am at making good decisions with my life XD

MOVING ON, THOUGH, HOLY SHIT. P5 was a very good game, but Royal’s additions & changes made it incredible. I like the ending way more; I think it’s more emotionally fulfilling and meaningful, especially with everyone’s more defined future plans. Definitely felt like everyone had more growth in the end!! Which is something I’d always thought P5 was lacking.

Snip snip for spoilers and the fact that this post ended up being too damn long, oops! the last third is basically Akechi feels and analyzing his ending, so......yeah XD

Part of why I plowed through SO much of Royal in so little time is....Akechi XD Like okay, this is my stupid fandom blog, I can be excited about him all I want!!! I got to Sae’s Palace and just....I couldn’t put it down. @dragonofeternal​ and I ordered an embarrassing amount of takeout instead of cooking because we just had to see how everything with Maruki and the third semester was gonna go down. I’d already been dying along the way because Akechi’s confidant dates are so good, I just. Fuck!!!

Also, look, for the entirity of Shido’s boss fight and the depths of Mementos/Yaldabaoth/etc, we’d look at each other every few minutes and just be like AKECHI SHOULD BE HERE WITH US, HE DESERVES TO GET HIS VENGEANCE ON HIS SHITTY DAD AND FORCED DESTINY!!!!!

December 24th had to be the longest god damn day in Akira’s life because like. Final exam grades are posted in the morning! He goes to school and then dives into hell, crawls his way back out, briefly dies by fading from human cognition, fights an actual fucking god, and then....ends up dissociating in Shibuya until Sae shows up and is like “oh hey thanks for everything you did, please sign up for being arrested now.” And while he’s still reeling from that, Akechi walks up to take his place, like some kind of bullshit knight in shining armor schtick, and leaves no room for conversation.

AND THEN WE HAVE TO GO ON A DATE

I romanced Hifumi this time around, because I wanted Akria to bang a girl who is just so incredibly out of his league, but....it’s not necessarily that I forgot I was dating someone, more that it had been *so many hours of plot* that I was emotionally exhausted. Like, Hifumi texted me and I was just like. Right. RIGHT. It’s still Christmas Eve, somehow. I was at *school* this morning. The whole world merged with Mementos briefly in the middle of this, Akechi is somehow alive, and I guess I’m going on a date now????

I do appreciate how many “god I’m just dissociating my way through this” conversation options there were for the date, tbh. I feel bad though, I really like Hifumi, but I feel like Akira is not giving a date his full emotional attention at that specific time. It feels a bit like emotional whiplash, more so than I remember it being in P5? Maybe it’s because I played it 4 years ago and there wasn’t the added emotional weight of Akechi’s reappearance, but it was just like....a lot, in Royal.

AND THEN THE NEW YEAR HAPPENED. I’d been spoiled on large parts of the third semester, mostly because Royal’s been out for a year already and I’m too curious for my own good. I’d also somehow lied to myself, saying I didn’t have time to play another Persona game right now, and yet here I am, 171 hours of game play within exactly a month, kicking myself for not knowing how deep in Persona hell I would get XD

Which is to say, as soon as the new year started, it felt I was drowning in anxiety. I knew something was wrong, I knew they were in a false reality, but knowing that sure as fuck didn’t make it easier to go through. If anything, it was somehow worse, knowing that it was all gonna come crumbling down, but I didn’t yet know the exact details, only the broad strokes of it. Just. Every time someone talked about something that was wrong, my heart would clench.

God, I’m so fucking tired, I pulled an all-nighter on Friday so I could get through Royal before having to work on Sunday, and I am feeling it right now. Life tips: don’t do what I do XD

Every moment with Akechi felt like borrowed time, at least for me, because I knew what was coming. I spent so much time in Mementos with him; I ended up putting just him and Akira in my party and plowing through everything, including trouncing the Reaper over and over just for the hell of it. I got his ultimate weapons, I spent so many nights in the jazz club with him that he ran out of dialogue options, and I still took him back for more. I accidentally failed to EVER trigger Sumire’s Showtime because every fight was just Akira and Akechi against the world, because fuck it, I’m playing this for fun!! If I want to play with them in stupid costumes and no one else in the party, I’m gonna. Royal did such an incredible job giving Akechi more depth and development: it was all I could hope for, and it made it that much fucking worse to know what was in store for him.

Somehow, I thought it would be harder for me to make the decision to refuse Maruki’s deal, since fuck, fuck what I wouldn’t give for Akechi to be alive???? But I barely hesitated, only really stopping because I had to emotionally brace myself for it, because a reality where he can’t carve out his own fate would be a disrespect to everything their relationship is built on.

I have a whole shit ton of feelings about post-beating Maruki but they’re basically all Akechi related meta so somehow they ended up at the end of this post, I’m sorry XD

I understand that they had to keep the going to jail bit because 1) Akechi didn’t turn himself in, Akira did and 2) it leads to the final events of the game, but let me just say....the emotional roller coaster of fighting Maruki, almost failing multiple times, waking up in jail, the Phantom Thieves & friends getting Akira out of jail, celebrating that, and then getting thrown into Valentines Day was a LOT for my heart to take. Once again, didn’t forget I had a girlfriend, just got too invested in the plot to really be thinking about her. It’s less than two weeks after the fight with Maruki and somehow, everything is supposed to be okay????

The scene with everyone talking about their future plans is such good character growth, though. Everyone feels like they’ve truly grown and are making decisions that, even though they might be painful or hard at times, are ultimately very important to them. It’s a really good contrast to the “almost everyone goes to Shujin and they all stay in Tokyo forever without doing anything for themselves” Maruki’s perfect reality bad end.

Standing in the Underground Mall on White Day, being told I had to get flowers but finally being able to have control of Akira again was....so bittersweet. The fact that the location of the date is the aquarium is a low fucking blow, and I almost threw the controller across the room I was so upset. Like. THE AQUARIUM IS UNLOCKED BECAUSE AKECHI HAS TICKETS HOW FUCKING DARE SOJIRO SUGGEST IT LIKE MY HEART ISN’T STILL ACHING????? God, speaking of that: The fucking god damn Featherman video game tore my heart out because I ended up playing it WHILE WORKING ON SHIDO’S PALACE and I cried a ton about Gray Pigeon because of course they had to dig the emotional knife in even deeper!! Just fuck me up, it’s fine, I’m just dying!!!!!!!!!!!!

I ended up scrolling through his texts to find the group chats that still had Akechi in them, and fuck, it was a LOT. Like. Maybe it’s because I’m too invested in the two of them, but it was probably the worst emotional whiplash of the whole game. Like, how am I supposed to go play happy with anyone while staring at texts from a reality built of lies? It wasn’t real but the proof lives on in his phone and his heart, and I’m still fucked up over it.

HOWEVER. FUCKING. I SPENT LIKE HALF AN HOUR BEING EMOTIONALLY COMPROMISED ABOUT ALL THIS AND THEN DISCOVERED THE BASTARD STILL HAD ALL HIS EQUIPMENT, INCLUDING THE ULTIMATE MALE ARMOR!!! He returned his shit after Sae’s Palace even though he thought Akira was dead, but this time it didn’t get fucking returned to my inventory, so he must have fucking run off with all his shit!!!!!!! Why the hell did none of it get returned if he was never alive in the true reality? Like I know it'll be returned for a new game+ but I like to nitpick game mechanics for story reasons, because one of the things I love most about video games is the experience of them as another layer to the story. The texts from the third semester shouldn’t exist anymore, since they never really existed, but there they are. Akechi insisted that he has a gap in his memory after Shido’s Palace up until seeing Akira on Christmas Eve, but who can say that wasn’t related to Maruki tampering with reality or some other Persona-related reason?

I mean. I got the full and complete True Ending; I saw him in the train station. If that’s not Akechi, then who the fuck is it? Atlus made sure to put the work in to make him a part of not just the main story but also, especially, the third semester, and for what....to have his final time on screen be as the butt of the joke, squished underneath everyone in the Mona-copter? As much as it hurts, his end in Shido’s Palace matters; it fits his character and he gets to go out fighting- carving his own path, really. In Royal, barring the tiny glimpse of someone who’s probably him in the train station, the last we see of him is when he watches Joker let go of the rope to finish off Maruki. I know we got the heart to heart where Akira agrees to reject Maruki’s deal and Akechi insists that he’d rather be dead than live in a false reality, but.....no one even says goodbye to him. It’s tragic, it’s painfully lonely, but it doesn’t feel right for such a major character.

Also, as undignified as it is, for the first time ever, Akechi looks like he actually belongs in the Phantom Thieves in that final moment. He’s never been the butt of their jokes before; they always kept him at arms’ reach and he took himself too seriously to be included, but for that brief moment, it really felt like he was part of their group. He stopped lying about himself for their last month together, and so even if they don’t all like him, they can make that decision based on the truth, instead of layers of lies. His death is all the more tragic for this; a life cut short just when he’s finally finding a place he belongs. But his death was already painful; why make it so, so much worse?

Final thing: I’m gonna be spending a ton of time in the Thieves Den trying to find Akechi’s opinions on everything, but also....hey. HEY. What do those six stars that Jose (probably?) painted on the wall mean? Is it just a reference to Persona 6???? LIKE????? I HAVE QUESTIONS. SO, SO MANY QUESTIONS!!!!

Anyway, I’ve gotta go cry into my Starbucks and desperately try to focus on actually doing my job at work, but I loved Royal deeply and cannot wait to drown in it ;w;

[deiliamedlini]

I’m amusing myself. I found a flashdrive of my writing all the way back to when I was 12 and had a notebook I wrote stories in that I ended up typing out apparently. As cringy as all this is, I’m posting this because I originally intended to use this blog to have somewhere to look back to see if I’ve improved, so I’m going to embarrass myself and actually post this. After reading some of these old stories, I’m glad to know that my ability to write descriptions actually once existed, and has since gone down the tubes.

This post has one snip of dialogue that I wrote in a story for every year I have on my flashdrive or on my computer. 

I also think if you (mysterious person potentially reading this post) have access to old files, you should totally do this too, even if you don’t post it anywhere. This was a hoot!

Warning in case you consider hitting that ‘keep reading’ button: This is going to be a long post, I can tell. It’s going to take up your screen and you’ll have to scroll a lot to get by it. 

2007:  “Did I do good enough yesterday to use real swords today?”

Benny nodded. “You learn quickly and your magic is strong. If your skill yesterday was a zero, it would be at a six today.”

“I hope that is out of five,” mused Adam.

Benny chuckled. “No, out of ten.

”Adam grabbed a sword only to have it taken away by Benny and he picked up a different one. “What is your skill number out of ten?” 

Benny chuckled again, “Twelve.”

~~~~~~

2008: “Hey, did you like the show?”

“Um… oh, yeah. It was really great.” In truth, she didn’t really hear the music; she just looked at the guitarist the whole time.

“Really? That’s good; we’re playing here again tomorrow, different songs and all that jazz. Oh, I beg your pardon, my name is Roger,” he said as he held out his hand.

“Elizabeth… Liz,” she said grabbing his hand. They stared at each other for a while then let go.

“You look familiar. Have you been here before?” His voice sounded like he was teasing her. 

Liz suddenly realized that she had made absolutely no attempt to hide who she was. “Um…” she stuttered, attempting to come up with a cover story. “No I haven’t. A lot of people say I look like, um, Princess Lynnette. I don’t think so but maybe that’s what you’re thinking of.” 

(HI I’LL NOW BE DOWN HERE WITH MY 5AM COMMENTARY! OMG THE CRINGE! THIS IS WHAT I THOUGH FLIRTING SOUNDED LIKE AHHHH)

~~~~~~

2009: Within an instant, Roland was screaming in agony as lightning flew from the man’s hand and into Roland. He stopped for a moment and the man in charge smiled. “Well? Has your mind been changed?”

Between breaths, Roland managed to croak out ‘no’.

 It went on for about five minutes when the man in charge sighed. “You always were willing to take the pain. Will you just join us? Give up that foolish rebel band you lead and join where rebels are accepted; join us.”

Roland was bleeding from his mouth and his nose. His shirt had been ripped by the electricity and he was struggling for breath. Still, he managed to whisper ‘no’ again. He was hit by the lightening again as another scream escaped his throat. 

(Um, hello to the torture scene I wrote at age 14 😬)

~~~~~~

2010: Nick grabbed my hand and pulled me aside. I looked at his thoughtful expression for awhile before speaking. “What is the big deal? Don’t you kill people to live? Isn’t that all that happened?”

Nick stared at me, his red eyes so intense, I had to shiver, “Something is not right. Peter might have the lowest sense of control, but that is still a substantial amount. He would not just kill because he lost his control, that would take much more than a good smelling human. That would take a battlefield. Either something is wrong with Peter, or it wasn’t him. We need to get you home.” He paused for a second. “You never think things are that bad, do you?”

A smile escaped, “I guess I’m still new to the supernatural.”

 (Excuse me, but vampire romances were a serious mood)

~~~~~~

2011:  Thav had Marley by the neck.

‘Let her go!" yelled Alyx, all sarcasm and toughness gone. She sounded like a little girl begging an older sibling not to draw on their favorite doll. Two shots rang out in her ear and she turned to see Logan with his gun aimed at Thav's head, but the bullets bounced right off her skin.

"Humans are so stupid. Do you really think that after all this time, I would have let myself be weakened by your inferior technology? No, your weapons will do nothing to me any longer." She focused on Alyx. "Would you swap your life for this one's?"

"No!" yelled Marley, struggling to break free.

Alyx sighed, defeated. "Yes. Is that what you're offering?"

Thav glanced at her, but she held Marley's head with two hands now. "No. I was just curious."

Marley stared at Alyx with unseeing eyes, but then blinked as a small tear escaped.

"NO!" Alyx screeched, but strong arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her backwards. 

(Wtf younger me? I was straight up murdering everyone)

~~~~~~

2012: Annalee sprang up from her nightmare, arms flailing and heart racing. Her body felt sticky with sweat and her vision was still blurred from sleep. When it finally cleared up, she realized Nolan was trying to calm her down. After a few moments and deep breaths, Annalee managed to really look at Nolan. His deep blue eyes were tired, but filled with genuine concern. She realized that she had woken him up. 

“Why’d you let her fall?” Annalee finally asked.

He sighed. “I didn’t want to. When she let go, I lost my grip on her and she slipped away. I tried to hold on to her. I really did.”

“But if you’d just held on longer, she may have grabbed something. She could be alive. You should have tried harder!” 

“I can’t save everyone! I’m not a superhuman machine. I regret not being able to save your mother! But the two I don’t regret are joining the rebels, and saving you!”

~~~~~~

2013: I sent sparks of light from my fingers, one to the other. “I do it all the time.” My voice was lifeless and dull as I watched the sparks.

Corin cupped his hands together before opening them again. Where there had been nothing before, there was now a bird watching me before flying away. “It’s nothing to us, but you and I are the only two who can do that.”

We sat in silence for a moment before I began to feel uncomfortable. Every time I wasn’t talking, I remembered that this guy I had just met would be my husband some day. I went to wipe my sweaty hands against my leg. “Doesn’t the whole ‘arranged marriage’ thing bother you?”

He shrugged. “It used to, but I’ve had eight years to accept to the concept.”

~~~~~~

2014: “Here is the real problem: if this was a real fight, I would have been out the second you pinned me, but you’re the king so I have to be kind and let you win.”

“Why? What would you have done to miraculously escape?”

“You’re fighting for your life. There are no rules. I’d have spit in your face and gotten out while you were surprised or…” she leaned closer to him, so close their faces were warm with the others breath, “I would have taken away your ability to produce an heir with my knee and then the knife in my pocket.”

His eyes widened and he took a step back, letting her move away, watching her for a moment before she smirked and tossed him his discarded sword. “You do scare me sometimes, Sel.”

~~~~~~

2015: Looking between God and Lucifer, I poked at God’s cards. “I… I donated to charities! My entire life, I donated! I care about giving to others! That must be somewhere in those cards.”

With a tilt of his head, God made a small sound, like he wasn’t entirely convinced. “Well, you have donated, but not to my children. You’ve been donating to WWF your entire life. What about those starving and in need? You don’t want to save humans, but you’ll save animals?” 

(I basically wrote a crackfic about God and the devil playing cards for someone’s soul for school and I loved it so much hahaha)

~~~~~~

2016: “And I have warned you not to get attached. Your troops are not your friends. Unfortunately, they must be willing to give their lives for you or the kingdom, and you must let them.”

“I can’t!”

Ric rose from the throne, slamming his cane down. Kenna backed down a few steps cautiously, but Ric moved toward her. “You will! I am dying, Kenna! I will be dead in less than a few months, and you will be queen. Being the queen means that you will make hard decisions, you will send thousands to their deaths, only you might not know their names. You will defend this kingdom, and your people from usurpers and tyrants. And you will give this order, now, just as you will give all those.”

~~~~~~

2017: Nathan’s face was pressed against her neck, the harsh pressure coming from his arms around her waist and the impact was his body crashing into her mid-fall. Shield, his mind screamed. She could feel their hearts, both in perfect unison, beating erratically. She was afraid they’d die of a heart attack before hitting the ground. 

“I can’t call it out” he hissed. 

Despite it all, despite the fall, she managed to summon her shield, and felt it immediately strengthened by Nathan’s attempt at magic as they continued to plummet to the ground. 

The shield impacted the ground and shattered, leaving them both panting and in pain. Stumbling a few feet over, she collapsed again next to Nathan, struggling to keep herself upright until she felt Grey run up to support her.

He sat up gently, his hand against his side. “You look terrible.” Leaning forward, he wiped some blood off her face.

“No worse than you.” She smiled and leaned her head back against Grey in relief. “But better than dead. Thank you.”

~~~~~~

2018: Kyle grabbed onto May’s arm to stop her. “I see one of them. Get down.” He put his gun into one hand, and held May with the other. “Let me see your gun.”

She handed over the old revolver, still looking around for any sign of her father, and Kyle inspected the gun, making sure the chamber had all of the rounds. It did. He cocked the hammer and handed it back to her. “Should have checked before.”

“I just assumed…”

“Me too,” he admitted. They stayed low and Kyle led her up further, keeping his eyes on the approaching man. “I can take them.”

“Don’t be stupid, hotshot! Stop!” May hissed and tugged on his arm so he couldn’t move. A second man approached.

~~~~~~

2019: He cast a sidelong look at her, his face the epitome of seriousness. “Probably not. I live for humor. Dark humor, usually. Sexual humor, modestly. Sarcasm, fluently. I’m not actually trying to lure you into my room every time I talk to you. Though, feel free to join me while you’re still wet.”

Sam’s mouth dropped open and she whacked his arm with a decent force. “You just did it again!”

He couldn’t help but laugh at her innocent expression. “See? I can’t help myself. Bad habit. Like cocaine, but healthier.”

“Cocaine?” she repeated.

“Sorry, yeah, I’m actually a drug addict.” Well, not far off with all the meds he was on everyday.

Sam tsked. “Fluent in sarcasm. I’m catching on.” 

(We’re in fanfiction territory now. Everything else has been original, but this is Until Dawn and the other two are Zelda)

~~~~~~

2020:

“Your arm,” she said finally, “How did you say you fixed it?”

Link made a face and turned away from her. “I popped it back in as soon as I got out of the chains. Not the most efficient fix, but it’s worked well enough.”

Her mouth dropped and she crossed the distance between them. “Let me feel it.”

“No.”

“Link.”

“It’s fine.”

“Of course it is. Take off your armor,” she demanded. It was that voice, that posture that she’d used on Link in the past, the one that had him unabashedly intimidated by her. And now, he knew exactly why. It was the demeanor of a royal commanding the attention of one of her subjects.

He sucked in a breath and shook his head in acceptance, unwilling to fight her, as he pulled off the guard uniform and chain mail until he was in the last of his layers, a loose shirt that was barely thick enough so the chains of the mail didn’t rub against his skin.

“Link,” she sighed. She had to see the bone, not just feel it. “You can’t possibly be modest. Before today, I’ve never even seen you with a shirt on.”

“It wasn’t like I was strutting around in front of you like some bird, but it was also before I learned who you were, Princess.” His eyes pointedly avoided hers, and he stared at the bottom branches of the nearest trees just to give himself something else to focus on.

"Well, get over it."

In a quick motion, Zelda tugged his arm lightly, and watched him hiss, stepping away from her in pain. “Gods, Zelda!”

~~~~~~

2021:  “Mr. Woods!” She winced in pain, clutched her throat, cursing her louder volume. But he went back to her side so she could whisper, and he stood beside her, waiting. She took a breath. “I find you tolerable. For the most part.”

“Do you?” he quipped.

“For a rotten pirate, that is.”

“Oh, of course.” His eyes were glinting with mischief.

Zelda’s mouth dropped in frustration as she watched his usual self begin to reappear. Annoyingly confident, entitled in his own way, and charismatic without even trying. It was all in his smile and his eyes, and she wondered if he had any idea what he was doing. “Don’t flatter yourself too much, Mr. Woods. I happen to find you all intriguing.”

“I wouldn’t dream of flattering myself, Miss Nohansen, especially not when you’re doing it for me.”

This time, her mouth didn’t just open, it hung. Her mouth formed the word “I” several times as she shook her head. Her eyes narrowed, and she made an indignant noise.

Link chuckled and rested his hand on the bedframe. “I’m going to leave before I say something that’ll bite me in the ass, which, coincidently, you’ve already seen.” He smirked in her direction, his comment just another attempt to get a rise out of her.

But to the surprise of both of them, Zelda chuckled and shook her head slowly. “Oh, I saw far more than that, Mr. Woods.”

Link’s eyes shot up, wide and completely shocked by her. He couldn’t even hide it.

Goddess above, perhaps her ordeal since arriving on the island had simply broken her. She no longer worked properly.

Unable to stop himself, Link burst out laughing as the most genuine, compelling smile spread across his face, one that Zelda had yet to see. And it had her cheeks flaming in embarrassment.

“Goddess, Miss Nohansen, I find you far more interesting with every conversation we’ve had.” He rested his arms against the bed. “I won’t hesitate to admit that I thoroughly enjoying talking with you. I suppose I find you quite tolerable as well.”

[dragonsorceress22]

fic game

I was tagged by @wickfursfanfics

Rules: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line, then tag your favorite authors to play too!

Here goes! I’m going most recently posted first and getting progressively older (and leaving out my cut scenes stories since they always pick up where their prime stories left off):

1. Take a cat nap.

At the top of the stairs, Eri dug around in her purse for her key.

 2. give and take (control)

There was once a time in Kaito’s life when he’d thought king-size beds were extravagant to the point of silliness.

3. Stolen

Shinichi wasn’t quite sure why Hattori still insisted on these outings.

 4. Kaito Kaitou

Kaito still had nightmares about it.

 5. Ritual

Kaito had tried everything.

 6. Casual Encounters

The rooftops, alone with KID.

 7. Magician of the Silver Sky Movie Cut Scenes

“Okay, Maki Juri-san…” Kaito’s toe bounced lightly off the face of the bar in the corner of the KID room.

 8. Tales of Travel

All members with orders regarding Kudou Shinichi are to stand down.

 9. Marked

Another day, another place. Shinichi had been on the run so long that he didn’t have it in him to question the comfortable little town nestled directly in the shadow of a looming Gothic castle in the middle of nowhere. And then he heard about the murders.

 10. White Out

City Mourns Great Detective, Savior of the Police Force

 11. Partner

It was a warm day, sunny and clear in late summer, and Shinichi was in the library.

 12. Window to the Multiverse (Close the Shutters, Lock the Doors)

Sometimes Professor Agasa Hiroshi created useless things: scissors that made snip sounds, appliances that carved watermelon sculptures, fax machines that looked like lunch boxes.

 13. A Marked Improvement

It was a sunny day in mid-spring.

 14. Here is Love

If Shinichi tried – if he had any inclination to – he could not have traced exactly how he’d made it here.

 15. Coin a new catchphrase.

Virgil walked back into the living room of his and Richie’s apartment, just out of the shower and wearing only a white tank and blue boxers.

 16. A Kaiba Carol

He appeared with no notice or pageantry.

 17. Who Spiked the Eggnog?

It was with a distinctly unfestive expression that Shinichi poured himself another glass of eggnog.

 18. Mine

“You know, for someone who is uninterested in sex, you’re skilled at it.”

 19. Get dressed up with no place to go.

When Shinichi walked into his bedroom there was just a flicker of a moment in which his brain demanded to know why there was a girl in his bed.

 20. Traverse

When his frontline defense runner brought word of a strange new arrival, Atem ordered his guards to maintain their posts but let the stranger approach.

  I’m actually really surprised. In my mind I have this strong tendency to begin everything with a line of dialogue, but only ONE of these does that!

I think the only real trend is that a lot of them set the stage/location/setting. (And that most of my fics are DCMK but… that is not a surprise by any means lol)

My favorites are probably 2 and 16.

Guess I’ll bounce this over to the only other writer I know on here that isn’t already involved lol

@solomonara

[kendrixtermina]

Thoughts regarding the Nolofinweans

One interesting thing to note, to me, has always been the slight contrast between Fingolfin and his kids. 

They’re like him in the sense that they’re described as brave, valiant badasses - Fingon & Argon being huge war heroes for example, but unlike him, they are also explicitly adventurous, which their father is not; he was explicitly in the “stay” faction but went along out of obligation (both to the people, but also because he gave his word, and because revenge) - meanwhile Fingon & Aredhel couldn’t wait to be gone, the former is noted to have marched at the very front during the departure. From how he’s described as very impetuous & heroic, we can assume that Argon was probably the same as his sister and oldest brother. 

The possible outlier here is Turgon, who is probably the most like his father out of the bunch. Pretty responsible & noble, tough not completely without some pride of their own. The way in which they go down is certainly very similar: “I have miscalculated & failed to protect those I was responsible for! Clearly all is lost and I must atone for my folly with my life, so let there be fireworks”

So, do the other three just happen to take after Anaire? They probably do in the sense of being very loyal friends like she was to Earwen (especially if you hc that Aredhel put her own adventure plans on hold to help her then-newly widowed brother with his kid) 

However, I wish to float another idea: 

Consider Fingolfin. What do we know about him? Though he’s the middle child, he seems to have been the most popular of the princes, at least in Tirion proper. That might well be because he was the one who was most often in Tirion, doing actual prince things, so the people of the city would have known him well - whereas Feanor was always traveling or working as an inventor; We’re told he had some influence with the scholars, but he probably wasn’t at the palace that often, and Finarfin noped out of everything & chilled out in Alqualonde - and why wouldn’t he, he was the youngest. It’s not specified what Findis did but it doesn’t seem to have been politics, it seems like the resonated more withthe Vanyar anyways, and Lalwen, like Finarfin, was one of the younger ones. 

It’s easy to imagine that Fingolfin was very dedicated & dutiful; Maybe there was an element of trying to win his father’s approval to it. There’s a very formal vibe to him, both from the title he ends up using, & some of the dialogue he gets, like, when he talks to Finwe in front of the assembly he adresses him as “my father and king” - certainly this is also meant to show that Fingolfin is considering the politics here, and of course they’re nobility. Maybe they just talk like that. But in the same scene, Feanor refers to Finwe simply as “my father”. Could it be then that this is a reflection of Finwe being somewhat closer with Feanor? Not impossible, but, in that snippet of dialogue where Finwe is discussing the events with Miriel in Mandos (and guessing very wrong about what’s probably going on in his absence) he refers to Fingolfin simply as “Arakano” (or whatever his mother-name was supposed to be at the time) 

So here’s my theory: 

In his younger days, Fingolfin used to be about as adventurous, impetuous and not-the-best-judge-of-character-y as Fingon, Aredhel and Argon, complete with some charley-brown esque conviction that maybe this time, Feanor would not pull the football away; It’s easy to see how he’d get cured of that last illusion with time, but there’s more to that.

He used to love nothing more than to go riding his horse around the landscape with Lalwen and do cool tricks; After Finwe would tell them stories of the great journey, he would go drape a courtain around himself and pretend to be a great chieftain. He’d do all sorts of daring tricks that won him the friendship of many other noble brats and some enduring Big Brother Worship from Lalwen. 

But then, as he grew older, it was inevitable that he’d hear people talking, that there’d be whispers behind their backs, or that he’d come across some documents where it’s referenced that his family was once the subject of legal dispute.

Much excellent writing has been made about what it must’ve been like for Feanor to have his very existence and the characters of his beloved parents be the subject of public debate, but the same would go for Indis’ kids, just in a different way - perhaps this is also part of the reason why Findis kept out of politics & the public eye. There were, after all, canonically people mumbling that they should never have been. At least Feanor would’ve been being a jerk to Indis on a regular basis. 

So at one point, after some humiliating experience or another, a still fairly young Fingolfin - maybe the equivalent of a 14/15 year old human or so - decided that he would have to be the most ideal, impeccable prince to prove everybody wrong, to prove that he was worth the dodgy exception, so to speak. If he were a clear benefit to Tirion’s society, he thought, with a bit of juvenile pride, maybe then people would stop talking bad about his parents, and his siblings would not be subjected to the same scrutiny. 

So from that point on he threw himself into his studies & his responsibilities (”Sorry Lalwen, duty calls. I’ll play with you tomorrow”) and did what he could to be a shining example, so no one would say that his parents were selfish for having him or whatever - and he was good at it, which ironially probably created something of a pridigial-son sort of situation. He was always there, suceeding & not giving anyone cause for worry (until things between him & Feanor started to get heated), so he wasn’t perceived to need attention; He probably felt a bit taken for granted now & then, like his efforts weren’t appreciated, or not good enough, though it was brobably just an occasional bit of subliminal resentment before Melkor came in. 

There’s one snipped that didn’t make it into the final cut, where Finarfin is described as the gentlest of the brothers, but also very learned and also a good speaker... which I’d sort of assumed anyways, because, look at Finrod. But imagine being in Fingolfin’s shoes with two super handsome, super smart brothers. He’s super exceptional himself, but when he was young & had only his family to compare to... 

Likewise, you might look at Finarfin’s super talented kids & conclude that he severely downplayed his own talents because he didn’t want to kick up more of a fuss & felt his father had enough “talented sons” to worry about.

We have to appreciate that the Melkor incident didn’t just result in a rift between Feanor & everyone else, but in strife & discord everywhere; Everyone’s marriages were wrecked, parents took different sides than their children (Finarfin: “We stay!” Angrod: “No we leave!” Orodreth:”No we stay!” ...But Orodreth did not turn back and had a thoroughly bad time in middle Earth more than anyone save Aredhel maybe.) - tough we’re told that at least his sons stayed civil enough to not outright criticse him in public. I think the partings between the children of Indis were probably messy too. Findis probably told the others to go to hell when they left, then Finarfin turned back, with some degree of bitterness over how all turned out - even the pair that was left in Aman might have taken some time to reconcile.  

(As for Turgon, he either simply won the impulse control lottery (ie -  he just takes after Indis), or got all responsible when he had Idril. )

[champagnesuperhoeva]

Seasonal depression is on its way back, so why not analyze another scene from Red Dead Depression 2???????

I’ve been meaning to do another screeching ramble about one of Red Dead Redemption 2′s many incredible scenes, but just couldn’t put my finger on which one. So I threw a rock and hit the Saint Denis bank robbery, that’s the story

strap in, motherfuckers, it’s time to regret the concept of empathy

It is such a missed opportunity that we weren’t able to chaperone the girls as they went about putting on their various bullshit personas to gather reconnaissance. I want to see Tilly reading a newspaper with glasses, a fake nose and a mustache

Something Red Dead Redemption 2 spoiled me on is just how much ROI they squeeze into every last line of dialogue. Not a single word feels generic or hamfisted. Every sentence, every twitch and blink, adds up to a greater whole. The more I watch, the more I unearth. There are several AAA titles that frequently get painted with the ‘Good Dialogue’ brush like Uncharted that don’t hold a candle to Rockstar’s work here. 

Take Hosea grilling Dutch here, for example:

Dutch acquiescing to Hosea’s justified criticism is depressing in its hindsight. Sir Spam der Linde is an arrogant blowhard that could give Dr. Gregory House a run for his money...and yet he still mumbles and bows his head when being told he needs to get his shit together. Compare this to earlier in the game, when he was snipping at both Hosea and Arthur for all their doubts and questions. Double that for the camp interactions you can find where Dutch and Hosea argue about the Blackwater Heist. 

Is reality finally sinking in a little for our manic pixie dream man? Does he just have a hard time bullying Hosea, who’s around 5,000 years old and doesn’t give a fuck? For every answer you get, you get another question...and I fucking love it. This character -- and the series at large -- toes the razor-thin line between transparent portrayals and thicc layers of intrigue. This kind of carefully sewn subtlety is sorely lacking in not just videogames, but mainstream media in general. Sometimes I still can’t believe I got to experience this game.

This little scene is just one of many ingredients to make you wonder that, if the bank job had turned out all right...if Dutch really would’ve started changing for the better. 

Arthur clutching his belt buckle like he clutches my neck in my dreams

So the plan is made and the cowboys are off to Sand Penis, and I bet nobody in the history of the world has made that joke before

Just the build-up to the bank sends goosebumps up my arms. 

Even with apprehension in the back of your mind, it’s hard not to get sucked into the whirlwind of adrenaline here. You have each member playing their part, from Abigail as the helpless damsel to Charles and Bill as crowd control. Great back-and-forth dialogue as characters anticipate what’s about to happen (with some delicious doubting from John). It’s like a group project, except you don’t want to slap your partners!!!*

*except micah ‘I Haven’t Scrubbed My Nailbeds In Fifty-Three Years’ bell

Fun fact: if Dutch hadn’t said ‘one last time’, the bank robbery would’ve been a success. Should’ve browsed TVTropes.

The direction of this game remains impeccable. 

This is a simple shot of a few dudes riding their horse...and it’s made just that much grander by the camera angles, slung low to the ground to create a stronger sense of scale. With the tense drums in the backing track and the sudden quiet that’s befallen our beloved anti-heroes, this provides the perfect finishing touches to one of the most memorable and stressful parts of the game:

The runway.

We start off this display of cowboy couture with Dutch Fam Der Linde, well-known in the West for wearing crushed velvet while hiking the open trail. Dashingly long coattails make up the bulk of this iconic look, with a sexy pop of red to round it all out. A complimentary red bandana lined with a hint of gold brings out the buttons, chain and belt buckle. Very regal. Much fucky. Still want to slap him for future crimes, so 9/10

A surprising comeback from the man who invented skid marks. Lavender pinstripes add a splash of character on an otherwise minimalist black ensemble. Complimentary silver bow on the hat and dark bandana makes me uncomfortably wet, so 9.5/10, would leer again

A classic suit with just a touch of more. A wide velvet collar with matching velvet cuffs create a refined softness, contrasting the gold buttons and dramatic coattails. Shoes shiny. Skin moisturized. Even his everyday ponytail looks fancier than ever. 15/10, if Javier kicked over my sandcastle I’d thank him

What are those????????? I think Bill got pranked by Uncle while out shopping for robbery gear. That, or he confused one of Susan’s tablecloths for a three-piece. The topmost layer of dust is so thick it could be peeled off and donated to charity. 3/10, could probably still pass for a picnic table

Shameless. Unacceptable. Walking around like a bootleg Egoraptor with a crinkly suit that looks like that oil-stained pizza napkin you keep forgetting to toss. Why did I take a screencap that makes it look like Dutch is jacking him off. Micah’s even jutting his beer gut out in an ominous foreshadowing for the Guarma chapter. ThereIsn’tANumberLowEnough/10

Arthur strolling in with that slow, confident walk that gets me pregnant in both legs, someone please fetch the plan B

Dutch calls a Hosea an artist and is most certainly one himself. He speaks with the affect of a poet, even as he’s holding a pistol in people’s faces and making them shit themselves in slow-motion. This man redefines stage presence. Why would he want anything less than the best, when this is the final hurrah of his iconic, infamous career:

THE RUNWAY: PART TWO

Bill out here just confusing everyone’s laundry for low-level loot. 5/10, may or may not be susan’s granny panties

charles: “is my iron giant cosplay valid robbery wear”

dutch: “no, charles, iron giant cosplays are not valid robbery wear”

dutch: “gorons from legend of zelda aren’t valid either”

JAVIER IF I GIVE YOU A 10/10 WILL YOU LEAVE

Here’s a little detail I didn’t notice (even after several viewings of this scene): Charles over in the corner looking like a dweeb.

Notice how awkwardly he holds that rifle: two-handed and with his knees bent, suddenly looking like he’s never handled a weapon before. This is such an odd contrast from the unapologetic badass we know. Remember, this is the same man who can wield a sawed-off shotgun one-handed like it’s nothing. One of the most adept physical fighters in a gang full of cutthroat motherfuckers. 

This detail on top of his dorky robbery gear? It’s actually a peek into just how out of his element he is. 

Charles has been with the gang for less than a year at this point. Even then, he’s usually helping with tracking, hunting and scouting. Whenever he goes off with Arthur on a mission, he’s always the first to suggest a peaceful route. This is not someone who’s used to robbing people for a living and it shows in the most adorable way. What you see here is a man putting on a persona of what he hopes looks like a bloodthirsty robber.

This whole scene is a fucking blast. Herding the upper-class elite into the far rom, figuring out the combination key under codenames, listening to the banter of the squad in the background. It doesn’t help I’m a slut for baroque-styled architecture and half my attention was on the pastel decor. Yeah, yeah, I know we have three thousand dollars on the line, but look at that gold filigree

These outlaws move like a finely oiled machine, not a detail out of place...which makes the ensuing mess all the more tragic.

...and this post is getting too long, so I’m going to post the second part separately. Ain’t I a stinker?

[tomorrowsdrama]

Hyena Ep. 8 - The Second Drink

The second time Geum Ja and Hee Jae share a drink might just be my favorite scene of the drama so far.  Yes, even more than that kiss at the end of this episode.

Both characters, especially Hee Jae, were so emotionally bare, it kind of took me by surprise to be honest.  Up until now, we’ve only seen glimpses.  We’ve never seen them actually acknowledge their feelings and fucked up history like this.  Omg I loved every bit of it.

So after Hee Jae leaves the group dinner, he goes home and can’t help but think about Geum Ja.

Sigh, he really latches onto everything she says.

One of the cardinal rules of drinking is that you never call your ex when you’re drunk.  In fact, it’s best if you keep your phone tucked away somewhere so you don’t end up doing something you’ll regret when you’re sober.  Clearly, nobody told Hee Jae.

Cut for a loooooot of screencaps.  I just liked so much of the dialogue in this scene!

I think I know what that reason is.  It’s a four lettered word and starts with an “L.”

OMG, excuse me,  what?  Did he just say that?  I guess it’s not called liquid courage for no reason.

Geum Ja tries to deflect and puts up her guard by joking around like usual.  However, Hee Jae doesn’t snip back and instead just gives an amused smile without contradicting what she said.  

Even though there are other customers in the pub, the scene is framed in a way that makes it seem like they’re in their own private world. I really dig this PD’s style.

More and more, Hee Jae realizes that their relationship was catered to only what he wanted and he really didn’t consider Geum Ja’s wants and likes.

Omg and then he starts asking her all the questions he never asked while they were dating. I was squee-ing so hard at this part.  They’re just mundane, every day questions you would ask on a first date.  However, given their history, it’s such a huge step.  It signifies that Hee Jae wants to forget their past and get to know the real Geum Ja.  Perhaps she’s not used to having a man sincerely want to get to know her.  Or maybe she just wasn’t expecting it from Hee Jae.  But you can see that it catches her completely off-guard and she doesn’t know what to do.

She repeats the same line she told him before, that she was never sincere with him.  Except, this time, there’s no bite or malice to it.  She’s not saying it to hurt him but to push him away.  And unlike the first time they had this conversation, Hee Jae’s face shows that he doesn’t believe her words. 

Also, the lighting, make up, and wardrobe choices for Geum Ja in this scene are considerably softer and lighter than when they had their first drunken conversation. 

And of course she pushes him away and doesn’t let him even think of getting close to her.  Again, she doesn’t say this in a malicious tone.  But she says it as if it’s for his own good.  It’s telling that she says to find a “nice lady” who’s right for him and to maintain his dignity.  She clearly thinks they’re mismatched and he would be downgrading from his world by being with someone like herself. 

That’s their problem.  They’re unable to have these honest conversations outside of these private settings.  It’s as if their true selves can only exist far away from everyone else.  

And Hee Jae hits the nail on the head.  He knows that she has feelings for him too (or at least is hopeful she does) but she’s holding back because she’s afraid.  But it’s hard for Hee Jae to understand why someone as strong as Geum Ja would be so afraid of pursuing a relationship with him because: (1) he doesn’t know about her past and the baggage that comes along with that; and (2) he’s not the one that has to enter a world where everyone has done nothing but look down on him.  As someone who was born into the elite class, he’s never had to think about not being good enough for someone.  If anything, he was always the one judging whether someone was worth his time.  Therefore, it probably doesn’t even cross his mind as to why Geum Ja may have her reservations.

Yes, get some more of that liquid courage.

I SCREAMED, and then I died, and then i screamed again.  Omg Hee Jae is not playing around!  The thing is though, Geum Ja is just as vulnerable in this scene as Hee Jae is.  I mean, have we ever seen Geum Ja make such an expression before?  Oh girl, you’re in it now.

I usually complain about how Netflix subtitles remove all nuances from the Korean language but I think they did a pretty good job establishing the distance Geum Ja tried to create here.  Geum Ja is clearly drawing a line by addressing Hee Jae formally, something we have not seen her do before.

Fuck, ok I lied.  THIS part killed me.  I SWOONED SO HARD.  He is just baring heart and laying it all out there.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen a male character in a kdrama be so emotionally open and honest.  A male lead who says exactly how he feels to the heroine?  You’re shitting me.  And it’s as if his openness scares Geum Ja.  She truly did not expect him to be go all-in like that.  Girl, you shouldn’t have made him fall in love with you if you couldn’t handle it!

Despite her lying to him and the numerous times she pushed him away, Hee Jae truly DGAF.  He knows he shouldn’t want to be with her but he can’t help it.  Because fuck it, he loves her.  Y’all I need a moment here.  I think I swooned too hard and need to lie down.

He then leaves their private little world and the shot opens up to show the rest of the patrons in the pub.

Oh, Geum Ja.  What are you going to do now?  Just give in and let him love you!

[wainwrightjakobshammerlock]

finally. i decided to do this. anyways hello there, i am jake and today i want to talk about something; you see, if you are in the tf2 fandom, you probably know about heavymedic. Wherther you are a hardcore gamer who resents f2p’s or a person that never played the game but has trillions of notes on their art- you know heavymedic exists and most of all you probably ship it.

And I find that weird. In the few fandoms in my life I have been in I had never seen a single ship be so widely if not shipped, then accepted. Sure, maybe everyone in the GF fandom knows what Billdip is - for better or for worse. Sure, maybe the HS fandom is 70% shipping.

But I have never ever seen such a phenomenon in a prominent multiplayer game fandom. A fandom, sadly, oftentimes filled with toxicity. Overwatch is very similar here - yet ships are either a hot topic of discussion or straight up ignored. But TF2? In here for whatever reason we ship these two mercenaries. And in this essay I will try and find a reason or two why is that.

Apologies for any mistakes or incoherency. English is not my first language, I need to ramble, and my vocabulary is all over the place.

Content warning: mentions of homophobia, blood, death, mentions of WLW fetishization, nsfw mention. Also MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE TF2 COMICS.

Part 1: Canonical Evidence and Interactions

Let’s be honest: I could ramble about this one for days on end. But I’ll try and keep it short.

First and foremost we have the official videos. And of course the first thing that comes to mind is Meet the Medic.

At the very start of the part where Medic himself appears, we see him telling a joke about a particularly gruesome situation to Heavy.

He laughs along with him, visibly enjoying his company. He even smiles as he waits for another joke. Heavy only shows genuine fear a lot later.

And of course this damn scene always cracks me up. Medic slightly pinches Heavy’s cheek and strokes his lip gently (the other part is almost not noticeable unless you play the video at slow speed).

Of course we all know about the Hand Hold that happens somewhere halfway in the vid. I don’t think I have to explain the gayness in that. The fact their hands stay interlocked even after Medic helps Heavy up. The deep breath Medic takes because even he cannot handle the emotions. That few seconds is unresolved sexual tension manifest.

Overall the short shows a strong feeling of trust between these two. Medic confides in Heavy and reverse. Yeah he puts a baboon heart into his friend’s chest cavity but the fact (as proven at the end of the video) that Heavy was the first one to have an Ubercharge implanted into him shows that Medic at the very least considers him a lab rat.

I treat End of the Line as non-canonical, as do many others, and as such won’t discuss it here. But it will forever crack me up that Valve endorsed such levels of homoerotic subtext.

These two have some short moments in other videos, like for example in Invasion Heavy helps Medic up (CINEMATIC PARALLELS) but it’s nothing major so I guess I’ll skip forward.

Second is their interactions ingame. You might call me a weirdo for trying to find stuff in there but holy shit I have things to say and I’m going to say them.

You thought I was going to fanboy over the “i love this doktor” voiceline huh? Well not really. I wish these two had unique lines if they assist one another.

Heavy is literally listed on the official wiki as the “ideal medic buddy” and multiple pages on that exact wiki say some pretty interesting things.

I have to say something about the Gentleman’s Ushanka and/or Pocket Medic. They are both community cosmetics - but the fact they both got accepted by Valve says a lot. Above is text snipped from the actual wiki.

Last but not least: The Comics. Darned comics. The pair of mercenaries has basically no interaction - unless you count issue 6.

Heavy getting absolutely PISSED when Medic is killed by Ch*avy. Their reunion. Medic referring to Heavy by “my friend” in a totally straight way. Kind of sad Valve wasted an opportunity for them to hug. Maybe they knew their comic artist ships them and wanted to avoid having to answer the Question™.

Part 2: Dynamics

This part’s a bit trickier, mostly due to the reason that I’m new to this whole dynamic analysis thing. Yeah I’m good at spotting canonical evidence but very specific shipping dynamics often escape my gaze.

The most obvious one is Big Guy, Little Guy. Quoting the TVTROPES page:

[…] This trope describes a pair of guys who always fight together, are best friends forever, and quite often have a very obvious hierarchy: The little guy is often in charge […] The little guy is usually listed first, since he’s the leader, and they are always listed together, as if they are one entity. In fact, some episodes may center on the fact that they can’t live without each other. […] If this is a case of Brains and Brawn, the Big Guy is usually the Brawn, and the Little Guy the Brains. It’s almost never the other way around, but in some cases the Big Guy can be rather smart too. […]

A sub-type of this, a common favorite here on Tumblr is known as “small chaotic big calm” and hoo boy if that isn’t these two. I don’t really have much to say here - again I am not an expert.

Part 3: Fandom Impact

So you don’t think Red Oktoberfest (as Heavymedic is sometimes called) is super popular on anywhere else than Tumblr? Wrong.

It’s hard to find TF2 fics on Archive of Our Own not tagged with Heavy/Medic. Of course most of them only contain hints to their relationship but go in the main tf2 tag and I can guarantee you, you’ll gonna see “implied heavy/medic” all the time.

But these two go further than AO3 or Tumblr or Instagram or whatever. They are recognized even within the wider circle of the fanbase. Take this SFM, for example. (I am using the Saxxy Awards version of Secret Lives here mostly due to the fact that the Heavymedic moment is much gayer. In the normal version, the dialogue isn’t changed, but they simply hold hands.)

But it gets deeper. (WARNING: THE GAY MOMENT IN THIS ONE IS NSFW. NOT EXPLICITLY SO BUT JUST A HEADS UP TUMBLR PLEASE DO NOT FLAG ME)

And the best part? The comments are extremely positive. You’d expect hoards upon hoards of homophobes screeching but no, the comments are supportive. Even on places such as Reddit or Youtube, comments like “yeah they’re gay and in love” do not get downvoted/disliked to hell; in fact the opposite.

Part 4: Canon Status

Let’s be real. Most ships are shipped because people want to explore the dynamics in fanfic, fanart or something else. But Heavymedic is shipped because… well, I have no idea.

Actually, I kind of do - but only theories. You see, while the canonical evidence is here, the creators have never said anything about them. No confirmation, no disproval, no hinting, nothing.

But the ship is so prominent! There has to be something causing this!- you say. And to that I present you 2 theories on why Heavy/Medic is so popular.

Theory number 1 states that we simply all choose to interpret their interactions as homoerotic. And this is very easy to disprove - there’s simply no way we just collectively agreed on these matters out of nothing. There has to be something bigger.

And theory 2 states that, well, our interpretation is the desired interpretation. But this is even more ridiculous than theory 1 for a number of reasons. If they are in fact gay, why hasn’t Valve made them canon yet?

A Theoretical Scenario

I am going to ramble big time on this one, so buckle up lads. I’ll discuss a theoretical scenario in which, well, if that was not obvious, Valve confirms Heavymedic as canon. Maybe then we will see why they will probably never do so.

TF2 is considered by typical capital G, alt-right Gamers as a “non-political” game. This means no women (in the game itself, at least, and if even, sexy women only), no queer folk and no minorities (for some reason they accept Demoman but throw a fit if someone draws any other merc as not being pearl white). Team Fortress 2 was around before Gamergate and other things like Gamers Rise Up. It’s a classic and Valve is regarded as the good guy to Epic Game’s bad guy. If Valve did anything to confirm doubts, wherther it be clearing up popular fanon or confirming ships, these people would throw hands. (Although they seemed to ignore when one of the writers confirmed Miss Pauling is a lesbian. Huh.) Even those that don’t play TF2 would come to the aid of their bros.

Let me illustrate with two very similar examples. In both cases these confirmations were the first made by the company as a whole, both are fairly recent and both confirm a character as gay.

First we have the confirmation of Tracer from Overwatch as a lesbian. It was done in one of OVW’s comics. Tracer is the FACE of Overwatch as a whole and while most of the fanbase accepted it (thankfully the Gamers are reluctant to infest ow), some people threw what I can only describe as a hissy fit. At least her girlfriend’s a background character.

Second is Neeko from League of Legends. Unlike Tracer she was added a while before it was confirmed she was gay. LOL is much more toxic and filled with Gamers than OW and holy shit people smeared LOL so much.

Of course these are not accurate to Heavy/Medic. In both of the cases I listed it was girls being wlw and we all know how much cisgender heterosexual gamers LOVE yuri porn. Apparently only girls can be gay because they can jack off to it - if it’s two guys then it’s disgusting. Nevertheless I think these are good approximations - in every case the company gets “shat on” on social media and other sites. With the community that Valve has, I think even if they wanted them to be gay, they would never ever confirm it.

Conclusion

I’m sorry for that ending. I had to theorize a bit. Regardless I’d love if you shared this on other sites, reblogged or whatever - I wasted at least 1 and a half hours of my life on it. Feel free to cite this as a source if someone asks you why you ship the big heavy weapons expert and the feral battle medic.

[mmmmalo]

Some Words on Openbound

This is a step towards a more comprehensive account of A6I3 (Openbound). The basic idea: Meenah’s interactive adventures can be read as a dream-sequence from Roxy’s point of view expressing the following motifs:

The threat posed by (Lord) English functions as a metastasized metaphor for problems posed by language itself.

To escape from the clutches of language is to achieve perfect communication, represented by a return to a pre-lingual, child-like state (“pre-lingual” at once referring to image, sensation, and silence)

The recurring motif of 'merging with child’ is also used to a. to express the desire for pregnancy b. to express the desire to become one’s True Self, conceptualized as an inner, child-self that is “born” within oneself like an embryo c. to express pedophilia

First: Meenah is Roxy’s doppelganger. When we are introduced to Roxy’s fenestrated planes, we are promptly informed that if someone were caught half in/out one of the windows when the power cuts off, the poor soul would be sliced in two (4510). By Chekhov’s gun, this introduction ought to result in someone getting gorily bisected by the window, but it never happens. Instead we get this:

Gcat warps the panel away, trapping Roxy in the void, and we are shown a bisected horse puppet (left). The half-horse reiterates the looming threat of Chekhov’s guillotine. Roxy’s body is intact, but the scenery suggests she ought to be split. The suggestion is followed by the initial appearance of Meenah (right), implying that Meenah herself is a piece of Roxy, snipped away and running rampant. Thus, a doppelganger.

So, taking Meenah to be a esoteric mirror of Roxy, it follows that her adventures in the dreams bubbles are a narrative frame for /Roxy’s/ dreams. This is the basic assumption of everything that follows.

1: Language is the enemy.

Time is an impermeable barrier. It ticks on irreversibly, edging its victims unto entropic dissolution. The Lord of Time and the destruction he brings embody the inevitability of death. Aradia cracks a joke about this at the beginning of Openbound: within the ageless confine of the dreambubbles, “time is a figure of speech”, she says. Though ostensibly asserting the endless flexibility of time, an alternate interpretation would indicate that Lord English, time, and language itself are apprehended on similar terms. The most useful one presently: language, like time, is regarded as a barrier.

Throughout Homestuck, characters struggle with abstractions, beginning with the frustrating data mechanics of the sylladex and culminating in various tightrope-walks along unorthodox configurations of space and time. Language numbers among the headaches: Caliborn characterizes the text he reads as “walls”, further declaring them to be “impenetrable” and “migraine-inducing”. On one level, this aligns with Caliborn’s statement that the kids talk/think too much and he’d like them to just GET THE FuCK ON WITH IT ALREADY: speech is an obstacle towards both the completion of the kids’ objectives and Caliborn’s attainment of what he wants. On another level, this aligns with the later discussion of Caliborn’s learning disability: in all likelihood, he has difficulty reading. Another example of this disdain for language is Jade, who, in her rapturous treatise on the wonders of anthro, answers the call of the wild by renouncing words.

No need to answer. Words slough from the busy mind like a useless dead membrane as a more visceral sapience takes over. Something simpler is in charge now, a force untouched by the concerns and burdens of the upright, that farcical yoke the bipedal tow. It now drives you through the midnight brush, your paws whisking through creepers, unearthing with each bold stomp bright odors demanding investigation.

Just prior to Openbound, the sentiments expressed above (that language is unnecessary, an obstacle to unmediated communication and pure sensation) are restated in mythic terms: REALITY ITSELF is being DESTROYED by (LORD) ENGLISH! Language the inhibitor of direct experience becomes language the rot of the universe, language the malevolent destroyer of the capacity for any experience at all.

Meenah witnesses English’s destruction of reality and rushes off to recruit soldiers to fight him. There is harmony between the imminent threat of English and the gameplay: the primary obstacles to Meenah’s objectives are words. Literal walls of text stand between you and the end of the level, as you must navigate exhausting conversations to satisfy the game’s win conditions. Within the conversation themselves, the motif persists by showcasing various ways that speech can obscure meaning.

Kankri couches his points in overly ornate terminology and uses social justice as a tool for settling personal disputes. Latula laments how her commitment to her RAD speech affectations and persona can make her harder to understand. Cronus trips over his own accent, Mituna tumbles through various word spasms. Meulin’s deafness is thematically succeeded by Rufioh’s inability to communicate his unhappiness to the Horuss, who has sweat in his ears. The two characters who you cannot understand at all, the silent Kurloz and the pseudo-Japanese speaking Damara, are revealed to be direct servants of Lord English! Failure to communicate – inability to bridge the barrier of language – is the enemy.

The counter to the hyperbolic threat of language-as-mediation and is a fantasy of perfect communication. In Jade’s scenario, attainment of this ideal is presented visually as Jade acquiring the superficial markers of a wolf (“Wouldn't these ears suit you? Would not this proud long snout assist you in the hunt?”), whereupon she acquires the rich experience that she associates with the idea of animal, unmediated by language. Just as Jade merges with the image of a wolf, there is an image in Openbound that Meenah seeks, the attainment of which embodies the goal of some idealized communication, without words.

The image is that of childhood.

2: Kankri and Porrim form a spectrum of identity

In Homestuck, desire is generally structured as the restoration of a lost unity. Consider Cherub reproduction, itself inspired by a Platonic model of love: in seeking a soulmate, one is actually seeking a fascimile of their lost half, that with which they were originally united. The force that fractures this unity -- the boundary that prohibits access to the desired object -- is the law.

I elaborate on the various corollaries of this motif elsewhere (x)(x), but for present purposes, let it suffice to say that time itself functions as a law of sorts, insofar as time rips you away from childhood and bars the possibility of a return.

That’s a little abstract, so here’s an example: due to the the status of trolls as manifestations, we know that the characters Meenah visits in the afterlife are expressions of her (and thus Roxy’s) psyche. This relationship is difficult to map on a troll-by-troll basis. But things begin to click when you view each cluster of interactions with Beforan trolls as a mental constellation, their interplay showcasing pervasive internal dialogues and dynamics.

In the first cluster, Latula appears between Porrim and Kankri because SHE IS THE LAW, dividing Jesus from Mary, Child from Mother (which, as I will show, seems to be the trajectory Roxy imagines for herself). This is the reason that Latula successfully interrupts Kankri and Karkat’s “conversation”: they are clones, more or less, and the law is that which divides the child from itself.

I don’t claim Kankri represents a child just because he’s a brat who gets ruthlessly mothered by Porrim: it’s also implicit in his politics. Humans are not stratified by blood color, so the hemospectrum is not directly analogous to any real life example of power, privilege, or what have you. Neither is it perfectly generic. In a given context, the hemospectrum is often analogized to some particular notion of hierarchy. Eridan’s drive for blood purity marks him as a analogous to a racial supremacist; the depiction of Zebruh’s attitude towards low bloods is well interpreted as being rooted in a particularly exploitative brand of misogyny (x); and Kankri’s polemics pivot upon the particular role that AGE DIFFERENCE plays in structural oppression of Alternia, a metaphor for what is popularly termed “adultism”, injustices stemming from the power adults hold over children.

Kankri emphasizes that the lifespan discrepancy between warm and cool hemochroma means the upper classes are allotted far more time (unto eons) to consolidate power and define cultural norms; their immense lifespans constitute a structural basis for the oppression of lowbloods, whose relative youth means less time to organize. This doubles as a description of a political limitation of children, relative to adults. Kankri describes the lowest grouping of blood colors as Burgundy, Ochre, Umber, and Yellow -- BUOY for short, which not coincidentally is Meenah’s nautical permutation of BOY. All of which is to say that Kankri rankling at Porrim’s doting is mutually analogous with his politics, in the context of Beforus, where coddling is the de facto relation between castes. His being a brat raging against an overbearing mother is an analogy.

And funny enough, that’s something he and Porrim have in common, in a way. Porrim balks at the /role/ of motherhood expected of her, among other injustices upon women in Beforan society. And Porrim likewise objects to the role of RAD GIRL that Latula 'pro+jects’, encouraging her to just ‘be yo+urself’... the idea being, in the same sense that Latula’s GAME GIRL persona masks her ‘real’ personality, femininity itself is construed as a shell encasing the ‘true’ child-self within. Or rather, the feminine persona is portrayed as being pregnant with the child-self, which is the true self. So Kankri’s raging against Porrim is a metaphor for a spirit balking at the gendered expectations that encase them.

If I can speak with any confidence on this psychological reading of Kankri and Porrim’s opposition, it because the invocation of pregnancy to communicate as sense of inner/outer self is repeated throughout the dream, through the language used to describe characters who are otherkin. Take Cronus for example: he is named after a god famous for devouring his children. And his lusus (an expression of his desire) is a seahorse, notable for their child-bearing males. The net effect is the impression of a baby in Cronus’s belly -- but instead of literal pregnancy, we see Cronus describe himself as ‘a human “born” in the body of a troll’, essentially invoking the image of pregnancy to communicate his status as humankin.

Here you might begin to see how this is Roxy’s dream -- the mental conflict between Porrim (womanhood) and Kankri (childhood, which while ostensibly gender neutral can be rendered masculine by opposition to womanhood) creates a spectrum of identity available to Roxy, as made explicit by their gender exploration in the epilogues. This seems to be the joke at play whenever Latula reiterates the “GIRLS RULE, BOYS DROOL” line from her theme song: taken literally, it is a succinct summary of the Kankri/Porrim conflict, wherein the feminine persona is construed as dominating the (at times masculine by contrast) child-self. 

Kankri’s description of a “warm-identifying physically-cooler caste” is Roxy: she identifies with her child-self.

And as I mentioned before, just as Latula stands between Porrim and Kankri, time is the law separating someone feeling trapped by femininity from a childhood where such concerns were nonexistent. Time is thus the enemy, which is one of the thematic reasons the Lord of Time warrants such resentment. A certain longing for childhood also characterizes the glimpses of John that punctuates Openbound: he laments the inability to recapture the feeling of watching Con Air with his Dad when he was younger (throwing his big tantrum at the exact moment that Cyrus threatens the bunny, which really ought to go back in the box, the perfectly generic object). Roxy later voices a similar sentiment in Wizardy Herbert via Beatrix, who would “trade all the badges in the world to go back to when things were simpler.” Elsewhere in the story Roxy emphasizes a growing tension between a figure with ~100 merit badges (symbolizing complexity) with another character, Russet (an apple, the emblem of atomic simplicity, as per drunk!Rose). Kanaya might describe this as a tension between Space and Time (1093), but here it chiefly serves to further underline the Child and Adult distinction.

3: The corollary of “perfect communication” is silence.

If Time divides the child from itself, it can be hypothesized that Lord English can embody this divide in his other symbolic functions, such as his embodiment of language. If true, it follows that the union of the child-self represents perfect, unmediated communication. Our first example of such a union then are the enmeshed Vantases (who are basically clones) -- but instead of some transcendent transmission of thought, we see an endless one-sided lecture. Spoonful after heaping spoonful of heaving diarhetoric fed directly into Karkat’s gaping earhole.

And on a psychological level, perhaps that’s an apt description of what it means to “just be yourself” without interruption, no commentary or insecure protests interjecting their way into your stream of consciousness. Ordering yourself around without a second thought. And I’ve been in the zone in that way, where I’m so immersed in a task that the task becomes me. But on an interpersonal level, it’s clear that “perfect” speech is entirely unequal.

Despite ostensibly championing the rights of children in the face of domination, Kankri asserts himself as the “teacher” to Karkat’s “pupil”, assuming that the transmission of truth will be one-sided. When confronted by Porrim about this hypocrisy, Kankri defensively insists that he is having a “man to man conversation” with Karkat, an equal exchange. (And oddly, even as she advocates for Karkat, Porrim leaves Karkat in his silence, gently assuring him that his dejected glance has said all he needs to say...)

At any rate, the Karkat-Kankri dynamic illustrates that the immediacy of communication within the primordial union brings with it an element of domination. The subsequent pairings (Cronus-Mituna and Kurloz-Meulin) elaborate on problems and abuses that can accompany compromised speech and silence, each section emphasizing a particular child symbol: respectively, angels and cats (which I’ve established previously). 

Angels first: Cronus’s claim that “as a wwingman [Mituna] is a total disgrace” uses “wingman” to invoke the image of angels. This method is repeated by Lil Hal, who observes that Dirk views him as a “counterproductive wing man”, to which Dirk sarcastically replies “nice deduction Lil Einstein”. The reference to the Disney Jr. show neatly ties the angel reference into the fact that as Dirk’s creation, in a sense Hal can be considered Dirk’s child. And in the same way that Hal (the child/angel) functions partly as a reflection of Dirk’s own nature, Mituna’s angel status indicates that he can function symbolically as Cronus’s “inner-child”, the self with which one is pregnant.xx

Silence is an interminable pregnancy. Not speaking means not birthing the baby, not letting the angel fall to earth. The hush is a measure against the corruption and ruin associated with English. (Even though the silent characters are his most devoted servants?)

Cronus demonstrates this with the command “vwait here, try not to fall dowvn, and ABOVWE ALL, try not to be seen” in which “above all” doubles as the place from which Mituna is falling. Language is the instrument of descent, Mituna’s garbled speech emphasizes his “fallen” status within the paradigm. Cronus “really hates the sound of” Mituna partly because he views Mituna as a caricature of himself, again not unlike Dirk’s violent rejection of the negative qualities he identifies in Hal.

This is why Cronus’s opening gesture is to fail a tongue-twister and cry GLOBES in exasperation: it is as though he has hit a snag in his verbal kick-flip and face-planted onto the earth (the globe) -- Mituna bombing his literal stunts and falling down being the root visual. Skateboards (and other 4-wheel devices) are vehicles unto “unreal air”: a status of immaculate lofty ideality, and thus untouchable and pure. The other skateboarder, Latula, made a point of emphasizing her untouchability as she performed some “objectively rad” tricks for Kankri. And more to the point, Latula claims that her intuitions “just make sense” and explaining them would not be "radical”, saying in her own way that bringing her feelings/intuitive knowledge into the realm of speech would in some way tarnish or degrade them. “4 grlz gott4 s4cr1f1c3 und3rst4nd4b1l1ty for th3 s4k3 of r4dn3ss” she says.

Another way to put it is that not expressing a thought can make seem invincible -- it cannot be exposed to the risk of contradiction or mockery. A relevant quote:

MEENAH: i heard a rumor you think youre a human now MEENAH: that true

CRONUS: its a privwate matter. i dont see vwhy i should havwe to talk about it vwith you, and open myself up to more of your judgmental scorn.

MEENAH: sounds like another desperate cry for attention imo

(Aside: an old friend of mine faced almost this exact conversation on facebook when they came out as a trans man, so this one actually hit home a little bit.)

Roxy’s sensitivity to the reactions of others is perhaps implicit in the paranoid staring contests with the void, but in relation to their gender expression, it becomes most explicit in the epilogue -- not only in the faltering manner by which Roxy begins to assert their gender expression, but in the narration itself. Although Dirk’s narration seems to largely reflection his own hesitation to embrace Roxy’s newfound identity, it should be remembered that he is effectively Roxy’s brainghost when narrating their thoughts. That is to say, Dirk’s reaction to Roxy is symbiotic with what Roxy imagines Dirk’s reaction would be. The mockery in the narration is the mockery Roxy expects and fears. Thus, Roxy’s level of comfort and security with their current gender expression necessarily coincides with the level of ease expressed by Dirk’s later narration.

But let’s return to Openbound.

The traumatic deafening of Meulin is analogous to the deathening of Jaspers: one is blasted with the violent shriek of a clown, the other sassacrushed by the “daunting text” of Mark Twain. With the cat as a symbol of the child-self, the message is basically that the child’s encounter with language is a violent experience. (Lord English is destroying reality, etc etc) Kankri neatly echoes this point of view by announcing one of his lectures as “my crushing harangue 9n this delicate su6ject” -- to rephrase, he is crushing the delicate subject (child) with his harangue.

Like much violence in Homestuck, violence of speech is sexualized. There is a moment where Cronus openly relishes the unilateral communication first displayed in the Kankri > Karkat pipeline. He basks in the fact that Mituna is incapable of repeating anything coherently, or that Mituna’s word is otherwise held in such disrepute that no one will take Mituna seriously. As Cronus does this, Mituna laments that Cronus is touching him and will not stop.

The bad-touch motif continues with Kurloz and Meulin, who achieve their own mode of “perfect communication” (union with child-self) via streams of wordless, emotive images. In the above exchange, Kurloz mimes an Ewok rubbing a child, to which Meulin responds with a small frown and a laughing Sailor Moon, as if to convey that she were the one being tickled in the previous gif. She slams the UNSEE button to emphasize her displeasure. (It is only after this sequence that we learn Kurloz can control Meulin’s mind, further linking harmonious union with tyrannical, unilateral communication)

It’s worth noting here that Meenah’s goal in parts 1 & 2 is to get through gates established by Karkat, ultimately convincing him to join up with her. Karkat who, alongside Kankri, currently represents the child-self. Just as Rufioh interprets Meenah’s invitation to join as a romantic proposal, Meenah interprets her successful recruitment of Karkat as a date, sealing the euphemism by reassuring her recruit that he “will not regret hitchin [his] wagon to [her] starfish”, which is a sex joke. The undertones of age disparity later surface as Meenah joins up with her second Vriska (x):

MEENAH: can i ask a kinda personal question MEENAH: i mean not even that personal but whatev 

VRISKA: Sure...? 

MEENAH: how old are you 

VRISKA: Uh, VRISKA: Almost seven and a half sweeps. VRISKA: Getting close to eight!!!!!!!! VRISKA: I pro8a8ly sound like a fucking nerd, 8ut I've 8een excited a8out reaching that milestone pretty much my whole life. 

MEENAH: 7.5 huh MEENAH: i guess thats a lil more respectable 

VRISKA: More respecta8le than what? 

MEENAH: nofin

For Roxy, the libidinal investment in kids is confined to subtext for basically the whole story: jokes about the speculative mechanics of boning chess people and elves, the sexual tension between Russet and the boy with 100 merit badges, the time Roxy was briefly upset to learn she had been “flirt-larping” with a 13 year old Dirk, only to resume the game a page later -- little moments. In the epilogues, Roxy being highly conscious of her interactions with children and the potential for reproducing systems of domination seems embedded in her trepidation towards any of the players governing the world they created (a hands-off attitude toward parenting that may also offer some rationale for Mom’s neglect of Rose, if all that is true of Roxy holds true for her past self).

But let’s move forward.

4: To See Oneself as a Host Plush

I’d like to reiterate here that the Kankri-Porrim dichotomy suggests that the categories of ‘baby’ and ‘boy’ are blurred in their mutual opposition to ‘girl’. Again, the letter of the law: BOYS DROOL! This offers a rationale for oddities like Roxy wiping John’s mouth for him during their date in Candy (boys drool), or this little slip-of-the-tongue which I wouldn’t quite call subtle:

ROXY: doin ok up there b?

JOHN: i’m fine!!! JOHN: wait. b?

ROXY: yea like short for babe ROXY: cuz ur my babe b

JOHN: oh, haha. right.

If we’re being less charitable, you could characterize this as Roxy keeping her eyes on the prize -- as though in addressing John, she is actually addressing the baby that he can provide her. And while I’m not certain of that, the notion of such double-speak (seemingly addressing the person in front of you when you are actually addressing an unborn child) is crucial for understanding the metaphors embedded in the Damara-Rufioh-Horuss triad.

The motif of pregnancy is here introduced via Fiduspawn: impregnate the host plush and a baby pony comes out.

You might remember that Rufioh refers to girls as ‘doll’ -- this quirk links the host plush to the feminine (at least within the context of this dream). To be more precise, the doll is characterized as a void that invites (or even demands) filling: this is a complementary reading of Horuss’s claim that Rufioh “stole his breath away”, synonymous with the claim that Rufioh “has a way of drawing the breath out of people”. The Rogue of Breath has difficulty standing up for himself (Horuss calls it “affable pliability”), so Horuss often speaks over him or on his behalf, as though Rufioh were a marionette. Horuss is saying that Rufioh’s passive demeanor invites this sort of behavior, that Rufioh’s effective silence means he is “asking for it”, to use a loaded phrase. 

How funny then that the “doll” of their group Damara (whose name means Silence) is literally “asking for it”, constantly. The same logic applies to Dirk’s decapitated head (from just before this intermission!) and Vriska’s comatose body -- through narrative contrivance, each voiceless vessel hauntingly implores a living Page to kiss them, to fill them with a Breath from without. The sequences suggest a conviction on the part of the kissers: that which is “empty” must desire to be “filled”, a framing that becomes particularly unpleasant when sexualized.

What Damara is asking for is ambiguous, at once referring to sex and the child to which sex serves as vehicle (among other potentials). I wrote awhile back (x) that Mom gave Jaspers an ostentatious burial as a proxy mourning for a miscarried child that preceded Rose, and her cat-cloning was oriented towards the eventual revival of her lost baby. For Damara (and thus Roxy) this becomes a fundamental myth: the desire for children is complemented in intensity by the conviction that the child has already been lost, or stolen from you. Horuss observes that Damara’s remarks a leaning “bloo” because (it’s a pun) her dirty talk is tinged with mourning. There is, inexplicably, sorrow when Damara says she wants to feel her nipples between your teeth. She’s not talking to you -- she’s talking to the baby.

This is also the joke when Latula/Terezi threaten to kill Damara for approaching Mituna/Karkat: the LAW will not permit you to access BABY! You may not recover your child or your childhood, time has barred you from both. (Though of course, through the pedophilia lens this becomes much less sympathetic).

A similar moment can be read into Horuss: Kankri, like all trolls, acts as a manifestation of some emotional surge, so Kankri’s sudden appearance implies that someone is legitimately triggered, despite the comic’s apparent commitment to denigrating his point of view. Like Cronus, Horuss’s horse-kin status entails an identification with his inner (child) self -- but the trans allegory melds seamlessly into other modes of union with the child image, such as pregnancy. So when Kankri asks Horuss to confirm that he is triggered by Meenah’s skepticism towards his identity, the reply “Trigger sounds like a wonderful name for a hoofbeast” is not merely a flippant non-sequitur, but also another echo of the core lamentation, a wistful musing on names for a dead/unborn child.

A brief step backwards: at the beginning, we outlined how Lord English’s destruction of reality was (in the present context at least) a mythic expression of fears and frustrations about communication and speech. Dissatisfaction /produced/ a fantasy individual to whom the problem could be sourced and blamed assigned. A similar attitude should be adopted in examining Damara’s theft of Rufioh’s “happy thought” Tinkerbull -- she represents an already existing discontentment with his circumstances, crystallized into an individual.

This is where Damara would seem to slot into the dysphoria proceedings: she crushed Tinkerbull with a refrigerator, a reprisal of the sassacrushing of Jaspers. The refrigerator is a womb symbol (I insist), suggesting that the womb is a hostile force on par with the Law of English (Girls Rule!). From the perspective of Mom, this could be read a response to her miscarriage, a result of blaming her own body for the child’s death. From Roxy’s perspective, it might be better characterized as ‘the body itself is a domineering force suffocating my child self’ -- and thus dysphoria. Damara crushing Tinkerbull represents the sense that your own body is a meat prison, a shell imprisoning (if not outright killing) your happiness.

This is why Damara manifests for Kanaya, who struggles to reconcile herself with Porrim, a daunting image of ideal womanhood, especially as it concerns the care of matriorb (ie motherhood). Porrim assures her that even though motherhood is to some degree a societal imposition, a role, this does not mean Kanaya cannot embrace the perpetuation of her species on her own terms. This is a good lesson, and Kanaya agrees -- but there stands Damara regardless, joy-stealer, lingering discomfort with self-conception as a host plush. “Just ignore her until she goes away” is all the advice Porrim has to offer on the subject.

(Passing thought: It occurs to me that the phrase ‘happy thought’ used to describe Tinkerbull could be replaced with ‘euphoria’, forming a clean complement to ‘dysphoria’... but wordplay reliant on a missing link is somewhat suspect, so let’s leave that one in the margins)

5: High Euphemistic Density

Let’s review by playing with some euphemisms in Horuss’s opening address to Meenah. I’m dividing his words into 3 sections for ease of reference:

1 HORUSS: 8=D < Your Harness... I mean Hayness. Highness I mean. HORUSS: 8=D < F*DDLEST*%. Please pardon my utterly e%ecrable language, and unforgivable stammering, your Horseness. #Sh*ot! #I mean Hayness! #Whew. 2 HORUSS: 8=D < I am a bale of nerves in your royal presence, and it has been so long. 3 HORUSS: 8=D < And when I am so spooked, you must know how that causes me to even more firmly identify with the majestic hoofbeast.

Starting with three: recall, “girls rule”. Femininity is characterized as a daunting (or even domineering) imposition. Kanaya displaying anxiety at the prospect of measuring up to the image of Porrim is one way this motif crystallizes into a character dynamic. Another way seems to be Horuss’s anxiety before his empress -- just as Kankri (child) rebels against Porrim (mother), the presence of Meenah (mother) induces Horuss to identify with the hoofbeast (baby). Both cases present a shrinking away from a feminine authority figure as metaphor for rejection of the societal strictures of femininity.

Two is a dick joke: while Horuss is ostensibly lamenting his anxiety, a penis is a literal ‘bale of nerves’, a sensory cluster. “It has been so long.” The pun is reinforced as the expense of Rufioh, who apparently did not have ‘the nerve’ to ‘finish [Damara] off’ on her quest bed, which is an innuendo for sexual inadequacy. That Horuss’s smiling face emoji is itself a dick suggests a conflation of identification with his happy thoughts and identification with the member -- which, based on previous discussion of Tinkerbull, would seem to blur the line between having a dick and being pregnant? Which aligns with the notion that pregnancy becomes a metaphor for masculine identification via union with the child self.

(“You very nearly caught a glimpse of a horse penis and began to cry” conveys a mournful yearning of the same order as “I want to feel my nipples between your teeth”?)

But the metaphor goes both ways: the brain is another ‘bale of nerves’, thus offering a rational for Mituna’s presence on the outskirts of the dream. His fall from the brain tree strikes me as less an ejaculation (from brain-dick) as birth (from brain-womb) -- hence the use of Mituna as the lost child, forever denied to Damara by the law (Latula).

And we arrive at one, which repeats a bit from Cronus’s introduction: Horuss trips over his own speech, illustrating the Fall. Just as Cronus attempts to silence Mituna to avoid the embarrassment expected to accompany self-expression, Horuss attempts to c*nsor himself before the judgement of his empress. The need to hide himself (as the stoic smile might indicate) is also embedded in the way Horuss describes his mouth as a load-gaper, and begs pardon for his potty-mouth: silence is golden, and conversely speech becomes excrable, fallen and profaned.

(Silly thought: on occasion, censorship can also designate the holy, eg censoring the name of G*d so as not to besmirch it. That in mind, I find it amusing to take Roxy’s line “holiest of shits // the shit.... // is down right // SACROSANCT” as a literal deification of excrement, making Horuss and Rufioh’s self-censorship look like a last ditch attempt at keeping the angel-child up in heaven. No?)

6: Conclusions and Questions

Obviously, this isn’t all that can be said of Openbound -- people have written extensive character studies of the alpha trolls, mined their stories for clues and parallels to less tangential plot-lines, and otherwise made whatever sense could be made of things. My contribution is some words on the mixed metaphors, word play, and psychological motifs that surround the proceedings.

If you, like me, are frazzled by the sheer density of double and triple speak at play, this is the gist of what I’m arguing for:

“Merge with child” seems to be the overarching motivation expressed in Openbound. But to follow that command verbatim is impossible -- the goal must be interpreted (as getting pregnant, as being true to oneself, as pederasty, as nostalgic pursuit of simplicity, etc) in order to be realized.

That the ideal merger is an image whose wholeness/breadth of possibility is lost in the specificity of actualization would seem analogous to the Fall occurring between silence and speech... so the motif persists on a meta level, maybe? But we don’t need to dwell on that more than we already have. 

Instead, I’d like to end with several new points that give me pause.

It’s still not clear to me why the silent characters are the direct servants of Lord English. Communication with them is impossible, and that frustration is what causes language to be conceived as a threat in the first place, but I have an itch that tells me there’s a bit more to it than that.

I don’t know what the transmission of the codpiece has to do with anything. I suspect it may number among various metaphors for trans masculinity, but that’s confirmation bias speaking -- from the scene itself, I gathered very little.

I wonder if Aranea’s info dumps at the end are factored in... you could construe them as placing Meenah in the position of Karkat relative to Kankri -- on the receiving end of spoonful after heaping spoonful of words. So even though Karkat disappears after you follow him, you’ve nonetheless “merged” with the child-function that he performs here? But again, I worry that this sort of hasty integration means I’m missing out on new info.

I’m pretty firmly of the mind that this whole intermission is chiefly devoted to Roxy, but I do worry that Meenah’s doppelganger status could have misled me on that point. After all, Jane’s planet quest contained references to her friends desires, not only her own (x)(x) -- would it be so odd for the same to be true of Roxy’s dreams? In which case it would be worth revisiting this intermission to double-check whether any given section might map more closely to the other alpha kids -- especially since Rufioh/Horuss is a transparent commentary on Dirk/Jake

This is a good a place as any to note that when I was operating under the assumption that Roxy was a trans girl, I was inclined to read the Rufioh/Horuss break-up as ambivalence on the question of getting rid of your dick -- which seemed sensible enough at the time, though the present model seems more consistent across the various conversations. It should be noted though that the language of gender questioning can easily serve multiple directions at once. So... I guess I want to make sure the apparent success of this approach doesn’t blind me to other interpretive potentials? Fingers crossed

...there’s more things to question, probably, but I think that’s good for now.

Special thanks to @red-zora for giving this mess the once-over.

Good night everyone.

[jbuffyangel]

Y'all are going to look really dumb when it's revealed that Maya is black siren's kid. Black Siren & Blackstar. Both have green eyes and blonde hair. & in the audition piece her character asked Dinah about Black Siren. Honestly this the marriage thing all over again. I'm going to laugh my ass off. You get what you deserve!

What marriage thing? When I said Olicity was going to getmarried and then they got married? Was that the thing? 

Because that’s whathappened.

I know it can be confusing since there were four proposals,one fake wedding and two real ceremonies. I definitely got what I deserved.No arguments there!

Maybe I’m thinking too specifically about this “marriedthing” because I agree there were some really funny moments on the way to thealtar:

Oliver proposing to Felicity in front of L*urel and sheapplauded.

Oliver leaving L*urel on their wedding day because herealized their fake relationship in the dream world was based off his realmemories from his relationship with Felicity – down to the damn wedding dress L*urelwas wearing. 

And then Oliver decided he’d rather live in a world where he had asnowball’s chance in hell of getting back together with Felicity rather thanstay in a dream world with L*urel living their white picket fence existence.

L*urel telling Oliver ON HER DEATH BED he was the love ofher life and he responded with silence. 

Of course, Oliver didn’t really have tosay anything. L*urel already wished for him to get back together with Felicity 

and acknowledged she knew she wasn’t the love of Oliver’s life.

Oliver telling Felicity, HIS WIFE, that no matter who shebecomes she will always be the love of his life.

That shit was hysterical.

You could be simply referring to general commitment too. Rememberthe time Oliver cheated on L*urel with her sister? 

Or when he cheated on L*urelAGAIN with Samantha (who was also her friend), got her pregnant and never told L*urel until Samanthashowed up in the damn bunker? 

Comedy at its best.

Or when Oliver ran for the hills every time L*urel mentionedany kind of cohabitation and/or long term future together? 

I laughed my ass offboth times he did it. 

The North China Sea and an island from hell were preferablethan a lifetime with L*urel L*nce. HILARIOUS.

Maybe the “wedding thing” isn’t the show at all. You couldbe referring to comments from the cast and crew in relation to Oliver’sromantic endgame like:

Stephen saying it didn’t matter if L*urel had lived. Oliverwould never be with her and it was always going to be Felicity on their show.

The showrunner confirming Bl*ck S*ren and Oliver would neverbe together romantically.

The showrunner saying Oliver would NEVER cheat on Felicity.

The showrunner discussing Emily and Stephen’s chemistry andhow it was lightning in a bottle, while acknowledging Stephen and KC’schemistry is a hot mess. (Friendly reminder you can’t fix chemistry issuesbetween actors no matter how many different versions of the character theyplay.)

ALL KNEE SLAPPERS!!!!! Completely agree Anon.

If you’re going to laugh your ass off about something itshould at least be what happened in the show. There’s plenty of stuff I gotwrong.

I’ll help you out. Let’s see… I said Tommy was Prometheus. That was a goodone. 

I also said there was absolutely no way Arrow would marry Oliver to theonly lesbian on the show. Boy did I miss the mark that time. 

Or how about whenI said that L*urel L*nce was going to die. 

Oh wait. Nope. That happened. 

Then I said the writers would never bring our L*urel back to lifeagain. 

Shit. That happened too. Well, I gotta get a few of them right once andawhile.

But why talk about the past? This is about the future as you say Anon and of course you’re right. Mia is clearlyBl*ck S*ren’s daughter. BECAUSE GREEN EYES AND BLONDE HAIR. 

Of course Hollywood’snumber one concern when casting a role is matching hair and eye color rather than finding the right actor for the role. Just ask Dakota Fanning.She played everyone’s kid. I’m sure she couldn’t even get in the door beforedocumenting her eye and hair color.

She probably needed a DNA sample too because we know the actors areactually producing real children to play their fictional children and thenmagically aging them 20 years. Someone should tell Kat McNamara that Katie isreally her mom. What a hell of an episode that’ll make. SO META.

It’s so sad we have yet to invent hair dye or coloredcontacts if this kind of detail is really important to a director. DAMN YOUSCIENCE.

I mean of course Felicity can’t be the mother because she’sa bottle blonde. Whereas Bl*ck S*ren, who you love to remind us is anexact replica of E1 L*urel L*nce, is clearly a natural blonde. Just like ourL*urel was. 

Oh. Nevermind.

It’s a real mystery where that blonde hair comes from withMia because everybody knows children are sprouted from the heads of motherslike Zeus and Athena. Women are asexual after all. The mother’s DNA is the onlything that matters in the creation of the baby.

You know what’s weird? I have brownhair and brown eyes. So how did my daughter get the most beautiful blonde hairand blue eyes the world has ever seen? OH MY GOD!!! IS SHE NOT MY BABY? AM ILIVING SWITCHED AT BIRTH? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! *picks up phone to call police*

Hang on. 

I’m trying to remember my sex education. I assureyou it’s been awhile. I feel like at some point someone told me the father alsoplays a fairly significant role in the creation of a human being. Somethingabout sperm. 

My husband has blonde hair and blue eyes. So maybe it’s possiblethe man I’ve been sleeping with for 13 years impregnated me with thischild (if we’re to believe the junk science of sex education) and passed on hisblonde hair and blue eyes to her. THE MIND REELS. *putting down the phone*

So if Mia wasn’t sprouted from the head of her mother andArrow has embraced the insanity of actual science, I guess it’s possible that Miagot her blonde hair from OLIVER. 

Wow. 

But what about those eyes? It’s IMPOSSIBLE for two blue eyedpeople like Oliver and Felicity to produce a green eyed baby. Although, Iseem to remember my 10th grade science teacher saying somethingabout two blue eyes making green in our genetics unit. I also did a 5 secondGoogle search and some guys from the Stanford Genetic labs also confirm it’spossible, but there’s no way they know more than you Anon. I definitely think your dunk-a-person-in-water-and-if-they-don’t-drown-it-means-they-aren’t-a-witch kind of science makes a hell of a lot more sense than Stanford geneticists. If there’sone thing history taught us it’s to follow the science of 1600s Salem,Massachusetts.

But maybe I misunderstood again. Your word gymnastics is sotricky and smart. It’s hard to keep up! 

Maybe you just meant Bl*ck S*ren getspregnant by Mr. Rando. I’m sure we’ll see her love story develop any day now,since she has to get pregnant really soon for Mia’s age to make a damn bit ofsense. Certainly Bl*ck S*ren’s relationship with Mr. Rando will take precedenceover Oliver and Felicity’s love story. It’s not like the show is centered onOlicity, so I’ll be on the lookout for this impending great romance.

Genetics aside, you also alerted me to the iron clad proofof the audition scene!!! What would I do without you anon? I haven’t seen Mia’saudition scene, but if she mentions Bl*ck S*ren then of course it means she’sher daughter. DUH. Everything from the audition scenes ends up in the show. Question – was her name Maya in the audition? 

I did see the audition tapes for nearly every actress whoauditioned for “Tina” aka Dinah Drake. Those leaked everywhere. I bet theshowrunners were pretty ticked. I’m still waiting for the writers to introduceCarlos or dive into Dinah’s service with the Marine Corps. It’s almost like theyput things in the audition scene that don’t end up on the show to throw peopleoff. Ya know, in case the scene leaks.

I remember when people thought there was a chemistry testbetween Stephen (Oliver) and the actress playing Tina (Dinah) in her audition.Everyone freaked out. Olicity was over! Oliver Queen was going to end up withthe new Bl*ck C*nary, which of course is exactly what happened in the show.

Damn it! I’m wrong again!

I really need to rewatch seasons.

Funny enough the snip it of dialogue from the audition scene for Tina did end up in an episode of Arrow. But the scene was betweenDinah and Diggle. 

So weird. It’s almost like they screen tested chemistry withanother actor. But God knows that wouldn’t happen because obviously Oliver isending up with some kind of C*nary.

I know what I’m about to say is insanity, but maybe Bl*ckS*ren was mentioned in the audition scene as a diversion. It could actually beproof Mia’s character has nothing to do with Bl*ck S*ren at all. I’ll be sureto ask the writers once Carlos shows up. It’ll be any day now.

And last, but certainly not least, Bl*ck Siren and Blackstar both have the name BLACK. Does this also mean she’s Dinah and Zoe’s baby? Because they have black in their code names too . Oooh maybe Dinah and Bl*ck Siren get married!!! I do love a good wedding theory. If William ever gets a code name he better make sure it has GREEN in it so people know who the hell he is. That’s the point of a code name right? Damn. Bl*ck S*ren is CIA level. She’s so sneaky. I’m sooo impressed.

Thanks for reaching out and showing me the light Anon. Truly, I am grateful. I can’t wait to see how this response ages on Monday. 

[korolevskiy-sekret]

Sword of the Stranger manga review, separated into likes and dislikes:

Likes:

The art is cute, especially for Tobimaru and Kotarou. There are some 100-emoji shots of Nanashi, Suichen, and Muyou, too.

The author did a really good job of combining scenes, for the most part at least. 

The Ming are so much more expressive and I love it.

Luolang especially has more expressions and lines - as a result, the bridge incident is less “Who’s this random foreigner snapping at me in Chinese?” and more “Who’s this random foreigner monologuing at me?” which is very funny to me.

The bridge scene was very well done, which is good because it was my favourite fight.

I REALLY like that they added that spat of rain after, so we see Nanashi’s hair colour way ahead of the movie. I also like that we see multiple moments of people reacting to him with red hair, rather than just being told that people reacted badly. 

Actually, Nanashi spends much more screentime with red hair, and I really appreciate that, because it always bugged me that he spent all but a few minutes of the movie with black hair.

I like Muyou sitting on the crate with the clock in it instead of... anywhere she should be sitting. I would do that too.

I love the page of Tobimaru playing with Nanashi in the hot springs. That’s some excellent interactions right there.

I like the scene where they’re talking about Nanashi’s sword, especially the “Will you protect me?” “Yeah.” “Can you protect me?” “.......” exchange. Hit me right in the heart. 

Kotarou excitedly and childishly declaring all of the people he’ll protect when he learns to use a sword, including Nanashi.

I like that you can tell Yueshen’s birthmark is a birthmark. I always assumed it was a burn woops.

The scene with the kid Nanashi killed was a very good addition.

I like the final shot of Luolang and his sword.

Dislikes

-cracks knuckles-

Virtually every female character got her part reduced or cut entirely. Like, a lot of stuff got cut, but the female characters are noticeable. Hagi, Itadori’s wife and child, and the little girl from Oowatari were removed entirely; Mumao’s part was reduced so significantly, I think she may have been in like five panels? This is actually pretty maddenning - the movie doesn’t have a huge amount of screentime for its women, but there are so many more (and so much more varied) women in Stranger compared to its genre brethren, that their absence is notable. Also, I just really like the female characters in this movie.

Related, the scene with Mumao and Fengwu is removed entirely (and thus, any even vaguely direct mention of Fengwu’s crush on Luolang, though it’s still implied). The scene with Muyou and Luolang is still there, fortunately.

The entire ending of this manga is... kinda bad. The author was in a really awful predicament: the ending of the movie is designed to be a movie. There’s so little dialogue and character moments and so much movement and music that it makes excellent cinema, but bad manga. It probably needed to be changed - but the ending, and especially the final fight between Nanashi and Luolang, is the centrepiece of the whole movie, so you... can’t really take it out? Which means a compromise - the end has to be changed and shortened, and no one is happy. So instead of Nanashi rushing into a fight between the eight Ming and a Japanese army, Nanashi is rushing into... a fortress guarded by like eight people, and there’s no army because Itadori et all were killed in their own house.

Because everything was so shortened and characters disappeared, all of the parallels get snipped.  :C  I like the parallels.

Was there any point to Zekkai being kidnapped? Did... did the author forget that happened? I think Shoan was just kind of left there, too. 

A pendulum and ticking clock to kill Kotarou is.... kinda dumb. 

Nanashi has some pretty amazing plot armour to survive two arrows and a gunshot wound (though admitted, I think it only grazed him). Also, calling this right now: in the Muyou v Nanashi fight they presented, You would have won, hands down.

Mumao’s death was so incredibly stupid that I don’t know what to say beyond what the fuck, author.

They changed Fengwu’s weapons from swords to daggers, which is is both aggravating and baffling.

Fengwu goes from being killed by a combination of Nanashi and falling to... being killed by Luolang for standing between him and Nanashi. I am beyond mad at this, not in the least because it felt much more... Bury Your Gays, than the movie. :/

Neither Luolang nor Nanashi’s sword broke.

The ending makes it clearer that Nanashi surived, but less believable.

In conclusion:

It should have been two volumes, like Wolf’s Rain and Ghost Slayers,

I am super glad I found it and have it on my shelf now.

That’s it that’s the review thank you for reading and have a good rest of the day

[theheavymetalmama]

And now, some Unpopular Opinions!

Because at this point, why the hell not?

Iron Man was better than The Dark Knight

I am in no way, shape, or form suggesting that The Dark Knight is a bad movie. Far from it, in fact. It’s a damn good movie with some fantastic performances, a gripping story, and some of the best written characters and dialogue in the history of movie making. So is Iron Man the better movie? For one, it’s not so stuck up its’ own ass about its’ message. The Dark Knight is a lot of things and one of them is pretentious as fuck, come off as less of a love letter to Batman and more of a method of the director Chris Nolan showing how much he has nothing but contempt for superheroes and comic books in general. Iron Man, in contrast, embraces it and has fun with the idea of a guy who builds a mech suit and fights bad guys. There’s also the question of influence, and that right there is no contest. The Dark Knight influenced Batman; Iron Man influenced the entire movie industry.

Final Fantasy XV was a massive disappointment

I kind of feel bad for dunking on this game considering they just cancelled the last of the DLC. Then again the last of the DLC was going to expand on Lady “Show Up and Blow Up” Lunafreya and Aranea “I’m here and now I’m not” Highwind’s stories and now we’re not getting them and I’m still bitter as fuck for the director’s pathetic excuse for why a girl couldn’t attend the coming of age road trip, so all bet’s are off! Okay, the ladies getting shafted aside, there is a lot to like about Final Fantasy XV, but was it worth the tedious development time? No way in hell. The game looks good but like many open world games feels mostly lifeless and empty, and of the four main characters only one of them is likable and isn’t even playable in the game’s vanilla form. The story is a broken mess that requires other forms of media to fully grasp (dick fucking move there, Squeenix) and the summons coming at random times serves as more of an annoyance than anything, especially since they always seem to show up except during times when and where they’d be useful. It also doesn’t say good things about a company’s management when a game can sell millions of copies in record time as well as do gangbusters on downloadable content and then still manage to lose over 30 million dollars.

And for the record, let it be known that Noctis is far and away the whiniest and most emo protagonist in Final Fantasy history, which is saying something considering this is a series where one such protagonist’s entire character is being so jaded and world weary to the point that his name is the sound a crying baby makes, and he doesn’t whine and complain as much as Noctis does.

Just because you’re a cop or a soldier, that doesn’t automatically make you a good person

I’m in favor of police and law enforcement and even though I believe our military budget makes Caligula himself look frugal in comparison I do support our troops. Having said that, being a cop or a trooper doesn’t mean jack shit if the person under the uniform is a complete and utter scumbag, which happens more often than many care to admit. In fact some people, many people, become cops and soldiers not to protect and serve or out of a sense of honor and duty, but simply because they like making others miserable and want to do it for a living. There’s a reason songs about fighting the law and unflattering depictions of authority figures date back as far as authority figures have been a thing. Respect is earned, not given.

‘White Nationalist’ and ‘Nazi’ are the same things

Calling a Nazi a white nationalist is like calling somebody who abuses their spouse a rough lover. Stop beating around the bush and tell it like it is. Also, don’t debate Nazis, punch them. Punch them as hard as you fucking can. If they punch you back, punch them again, and again, and again until they either run away (which most of them do) or stop moving. Trust me, nobody is going to miss them. That goes double for the alt right. Oh, and speaking of which...

Far Cry 5 chickened out

As somebody who grew up in a dead gold mining community that was mostly Catholic, when the first trailer for Far Cry 5 came out I was stoked as hell for the chance to gun down religious fanatics and skinheads in a place in rural America that didn’t look all that different. Then the game came out and it was abundantly clear to anybody that something somewhere in the game was changed at the last minute. Some have argued that it was their intention from the get go, others claimed they didn’t want to alienate their core demographic. It doesn’t say nice things about your core demographic if you’re worried about depictions of white supremacist cultists scaring them away, but okay, fine. Then make a game that takes place during the decline of the Ku Klux Klan, or in a post World War II Europe where you hunt Nazi war criminals, or failing that make something akin to Black Dynamite or a wacky 70′s Kung Fu movie where everything is purposefully over the top and exaggerated, I don’t care! All your other games have you gunning down hordes of brown people, let people like me and my husband kill some skinheads god damn it!

If you still support Donald Trump after all the vile and abhorrent things he’s done, you’re a bad person

There’s no beating around the bush on this one. I don’t blame people who were swooned by this conman thinking he’d genuinely make a good president and have since regretted their decision. I have nothing but sympathy for them. No, I’m talking about the people who STILL trip over themselves to defend this vile, homophobic, delusions, misogynist, narcissistic bigot. Like when he called Nazis “very fine people,” or is still pushing for a stupid wall along our border that will be bested by two extension ladders and a pair of tin snips. The travel ban, the rollback on regulations that kept food insecure people fed, kids dying in his fucking concentration camps, yeah, no. He’s a treasonous scumbag who deserves to be locked in an 8x8 cell until he rots, and if you still support him then you can claim the top bunk.

Climate change is real and coal can fuck off

Coal is dead. Let it lay down and rot. What, coal is your only source of income in the area you live in? Then move somewhere else! You think I would have left my hometown if there were any opportunities other than timber, fishing, and tourist traps? Sorry, but the longer we stay in the past with coal the lesser we can look forward to a future where a planet can sustain human life. If we want our planet to live then coal needs to die.

No, the left isn’t “just as bad” as the right

This is a fucking gas lighting farce that immediately falls apart when put under scrutiny. Are there extremists and crazies on the left? Of course there are, but they’re entirely different beasts as those found on the right. The left is more of a “eat enough kale and you can talk to dolphins” or “sleep with crystals under your bed and you can see the future” kinds of crazy, whereas the right is more of the “kill all the queers and let the brown babies starve” kind of crazy. Oh, and to each and every single person who said “Clinton is just as bad as Trump,” y’all can cover your reproductive organs in honey and stick them in a mason jar filled with live bullet ants and tarantula hawks, you ignorant scare mongering shitheels!

“Captain Marvel doesn’t smile!”

So what? She’s a space Navy Seal, not a boy scout like Captain America or Superman; she’s not supposed to smile.

No, the ‘alt left’ doesn’t exist and Antifa aren’t the same as Nazis

Are Antifa breaking the law? Yes. Should they be held accountable for their actions? Yes. Are people who want to kill Nazis exactly the same as people who want to exterminate the Jews and subjugate anybody who isn’t white while wiping other people’s culture off the face of the Earth under an authoritarian rule? Hell to the no and “Antifa is just as bad as the Nazis” is right up there with “Vaccinations cause autism” and “the Earth is flat” on the scale of “If you believe this, you are STUPID.” If Nazis and white supremacists went unopposed they’d go around raping and murdering Jews and non whites until there were absolutely none of them left. You know Antifa would be doing if there weren’t any Nazis around? Sitting in their crappy apartments smoking weed, sipping craft beer, eating pizza, and laughing their asses off at 20 year old Saturday Night Live skits. Ooooooh, scary! Yes, Antifa are assaulting people and destroying public property and yes they should be held accountable for their actions. But I’m not going to pretend, even hypothetically, that Nazi apologist scumbags like Tucker Carlson having his door banged on or actual Nazis like Richard Spencer getting punched in the face is on the same playing field as babies being put in cages, innocent black people being murdered by cops, or Jews being put into ovens, you fucks!

New She Ra is better than Old She Ra and 80′s cartoons in general

If you don’t like the new She Ra and prefer the old one, fine, you do you, but don’t act like the original is “So much better” because it isn’t at all. The villains were jokes, the animation was beyond cheap, the characters all looked the same, there were stupid talking animal sidekicks, and the story went nowhere really fucking fast outside of “Bad guys are doing bad guy stuff, our heroes must stop them” because they were commercials to sell toys. Nothing more, nothing less. If the new She Ra isn’t your bag then that’s all well and good, but don’t be a stupid asshole about it, talking about how it wasn’t featured at PowerCon like it’s a big fucking deal when only sad dorks like us give a shit about conventions, or whine about how you’re being oppressed and censored because a 16 year old isn’t rocking 44DD’s, or talk about “CalArts style” like that’s a real goddamn thing. Oh yeah, and speaking of which...

“CalArts style” is not a thing

Shut the fuck up, no it isn’t. It’s a stupid, meaningless buzzword hurled at people who never fucking went to CalArts in the first place. If you’re perplexed as to why modern cartoons all look like Steven Universe, the simple fact is that cartoons are made predominantly for children and shows are made to be aesthetically pleasing to them. With shows like Adventure Time, Regular Show, Steven Universe, Star vs the Forces of Evil, and Gravity Falls being soaring success stories while shows like Young Justice, new GI Joe, and 2011 Thundercats ambitious failures, it’s obvious that formal abstractionist non angularity is in while aspirational human physical fitness is out, and a big reason the latter was even a thing in the first place is because they were toy commercials first and there were only so many variations on plastic molds to form the fucking action figures and because it was the 80′s and Arnold was the biggest star at the time.

“Star Wars: the Last Jedi” is a good movie and fanboys can eat bantha poodoo

I’ve heard all the reasons for why The Last Jedi is a bad movie and they’re all either stupid nitpicky bullshit or meaningless fanboy gripes. I could write an entire essay debunking those reasons point for point, like how the reason Holdo didn’t tell Poe a damn thing because no admiral would ever a tell a lowly grunt anything about their plan, especially after being demoted for being a hotheaded little fuckup. Or that Rey being related to Obi Wan or any previous Star Wars character didn’t happen because that would have been stupid and the definition of predictable. Or that the reason Akbar didn’t do the suicide run is because he’s a meme that the general audience doesn’t give a shit about and that there’s no way in Hell that the Mouse would allow a character named “Akbar” to do a suicide run. Or that Kylo Ren not being an intimidating villain is the whole point and that you’re supposed to hate him because he’s a petulant Darth Vader wannabe and a snake to boot. Or that the effectiveness of said suicide run, where Snoke came from, or the state of the Resistance by the end of the movie, or that any other so called ‘plot hole’ doesn’t matter because this is a movie about space wizards for children and paying obsessive attention to meaningless and pedantic details is exactly how we end up with stupid subplots in the Beauty and the Beast remake and Metropolis and Gotham City being across the river from each other! But the biggest one is Luke wasn’t portrayed as some Jedi Clint Eastwood (why fanboys want that eludes me; the EU did that a few times and they were all terrible) and that him exiling himself doesn’t make any sense.

Sorry, but no, Luke running off to a far and unreachable island makes perfect sense. For one, it’s kind of a thing that disgraced Jedi do, and for two, Star Wars is a fairy tale in space. All of the characters draw inspiration from characters and archetypes from fairy tales and fables of old, and the one Luke Skywalker resembles most (largely by design) is King Arthur. Think about it. Common boy who doesn’t know who his real parents are, meets an old wizard, gets a legendary sword, discovers he’s of noble lineage, tags along with a few colorful characters, goes on a quest that’s bigger than him and the life he knew, hits a few bumps down the road, and then eventually he saves the kingdom by overthrowing his father who once was a great man and a hero but gave in to power and corruption and became a dark reflection of his former self.

You will never unsee that. 

Oh yeah, and remember how things turned out for King Arthur in the end? He started a whole new kingdom, he had a few good years, he grew arrogant, things started to fall apart, and suddenly he and everything he worked to build up were undone overnight by a younger, more vindictive relative. Disgraced, Arthur was whisked away to an unreachable island deep rooted in his own legend and mythology where he remained until Britain had fallen to darkness and needed him again. Now of course Britain as we know it has yet to see such a thing (we’ll see how Brexit turns out) but Luke did exactly that. And no, sorry fanboys, but The Last Jedi wasn’t a failure in any sense of the word. It grossed over a billion dollars, received critical praise, the DVDs and BluRays sold like hotcakes, and was adored by kids, teenagers, and young adults, the primary audience that Star Wars is for in the first place. And I don’t give a shit what the audience score on RT says, because for one aggregate sites are a blight on film criticism and we went from this;

“Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad are AMAZING, Rotten Tomatoes is biased and paid off by Disney!”

To this...

“Star Wars: the Last Jedi is TERRIBLE, Rotten Tomatoes says so!”

In just over a year. To say nothing of the fact that what you’re currently saying about The Last Jedi was also said about The Empire Strikes, and like ‘Empire’ twenty years from now people will look back on the fanboy outrage and say “Wow, what a bunch of babies.” And before the inevitable response...

“But Solo bombed because of The Last Jedi!” 

Nooooo, Solo bombed because it came out right between Infinity War and Deadpool 2, was rife with development issues since day one of production, it was aimed overwhelmingly at fanboys obsessed with Star Wars deep lore answering questions that the general audience doesn’t give a shit about, nobody was even interested in the thing until the Lego Movie guys were signed on for a hot second, moviegoers aren’t currently hurting for cocky space cowboys...

...and because of the simple fact that it’s a solo movie about Han Solo...and it’s not 1995 and Harrison Ford isn’t in it. See, fanboys don’t realize that just because nerd and geek bullshit is mainstream now doesn’t mean that everyone is now a fanboy deep rooted in everything from where the characters are from to where they’re going, because when people say “I love Star Wars and Han Solo is my favorite character” what the vast majority of them mean is “Those movies with the space wizards and the laser swords are a lot of fun and Harrison Ford is a great movie star.” That’s it. That’s extent of why people like Han Solo. Sad dorks like us may care about stuff like where and when he got the Falcon, how he met Chewie, where the dice came from and all of that and more, but the general audience just wants to see Harrison Ford do cool shit in space. That’s it. To say nothing of the fact that nobody was even interested in the spinoffs in the first place. When Disney announced that they were making episodes 7,8, and 9 everyone went “Oh Hell yes, sign me up!” Then when they followed up with that they were also making spinoff movies about stuff that happened off screen or between movies the same audience was like “Oh...well that’s neat, I guess.”

And no, that stupid fanboy boycott had nothing to do with. Even the dude who started that petition to strike TLJ from canon admitted that he was in a bad place and that he was being stupid and angry, and I can promise you that all the shrieking dorks on Youtube are the buzzing of flies to Disney. If that crowd had any box office and movie making decision influence whatsoever, the next spinoff we’d see a trailer for would be “My Twi’lek Waifu: a Star Wars Story.”

PewDiePie is the worst thing to happen to video games this side of the gaming crash of 83 and he needs to fuck off

Yes, you read that right, and I don’t say that lightly. All sorts of terrible things have happened in the gaming industry since the gaming crash of 83. The console wars, the Atari Jaguar, the Philips CDi, Jack Thompson, the death of the Dreamcast, WoW, an entire console generation packed to the gills with homogenous gray and brown shooters with protagonists who all looked the fucking same, GamerGate, microtransactions, DLC abuse, the death of Maxis, an increasingly toxic fandom, “women are too hard to animate,” the degradation of E3 from a showcase of the biggest and bestest in gaming to a corporately sponsored circlejerk of self congratulatory backslapping and so much, much more.

I don’t care how much PewDiePie gives to charity, or how many fans he has, or how many people think he’s just the greatest, because he’s not. He’s an embarrassing, stupid asshole who constantly gets busted for making stupid racist jokes and by extension making his fans and everyone who has even the vaguest ties to the word ‘gamer’ look like stupid, racist assholes. He’s a corporate ass sucking apologist who gives exposure to anti Semites and racist wastes of space to his audience of mostly 10 to 15 year old boys, and he’s more terminally obnoxious than an Adderall addicted Pomeranian. 

The day he posted his first video of him overreacting to a jump scare while making loud screeching noises on top of edgy rape jokes was the day the progress of “gaming as an art form” was shot between the eyes, placed in a box that was then filled with concrete, and thrown into the ocean. He’s a dumbass man child that’s making all of us look bad and he needs to take his millions worth of corporate sponsorships and fuck off forever into some dark, lonely corner of the Internet where he’ll never be seen or heard from again until an inevitable meltdown that lands him on an episode of Down the Rabbit Hole.

And that concludes this post. I’ll give my final thoughts tomorrow, and on Saturday I’m closing this account forever.

[rainy-rose]

Silver Serpent: Takeru and Vincent

Hullo, I needed to work a bit on Vincent and Takeru and their friendship before the plot and this snipped happened. I am not entirely pleased with it, but it id help me find out more about my boys. Enjoy! ^_^

TW: vague implication of a past suicide attempt

Waves came crashing on the rocks and shore. The air was thick with the smell of sea salt. The wind was lifting the sand and constantly moving it around, displeased with its position and frustrated that it could not dislocate larger chunks. On the horizon dark grey clouds were slowly making their way towards Rockcliffe Beach.

On a flat, light grey boulder, Takeru was laying on his side with his back to the water, a half-finished cigarette in the corner of his lips, and a black backpack with a small flashlight hanging from one of the zippers at the base of the rock. The rising gale was playing in his hair, long, thick, dark strands going all over the place, especially in his mouth and eyes. He shook his head. There were two black hairbands around his left wrist, but the intention of using them was nowhere to be found. Bored, seemingly uninterested dark brown, almost black eyes were slowly following the animals. Running around on his long slim legs, Schilo, the greyhound mix was snapping playfully at the peregrine falcon which was flying just a few inches above his muzzle. Hiei’s strong beak was open, short high pitched calls alternating with longer variously pitched ones. The dog was barking in response, an inviting delighted sound sometimes turning into a low, nonthreatening growl. They were fun to watch, their friendship always blooming despite their differences.

A short distance away, shoes and socks in hand, water lapping at his feet and ankles, Vincent was making his way towards the boulder. He had been walking for a while, listening to the calming sound of the waves. The last few weeks had been tiring, work piled up, urgent foreign requests for help keeping him up late into the night. He had been tired, stressed, sloppy and aggressive in conducting the training of his disciples. When his friend had suggested the quick getaway he was so quick to accept that he bumped his knees on the desk, cursing.

‘I’m going for a swim!’ he said in a monotone reaching the stone and taking off his light coat and shirt. It was cold, barely April, but Vincent did not feel it, his body temperature running higher than everybody else’s, his blood hot as the fires that were bending to his every whim and will. ‘I won’t be long!’ he added taking off the silver necklace he always wore and handing it over.

‘Careful!’ Takeru’s soft baritone rose slightly over the noise all around them. The cold metal of the zippo touched hardly touched the scrapped skin of his palm before long slender fingers closed around it and he was putting it around his neck for safe keeping.

And like that Vincent was gone, running into the water.  Growing up next to the sea in a small Romanian town, swimming came natural to him. The waves were getting higher, the clouds closer, a storm imminent. He did not care! With every stroke he was getting deeper and deeper, farther and farther his body welcoming the exercise, the resistance of the current. Holding his breath, he dived in. The water was murky, impossible to see through. Less than twenty seconds passed before he rose to the surface and in another ten he was going under again. Getting used to the temperature was easy, by the fifth dive, the water around him was warming up a little, steam spiraling from the surface. Relief washed all over him. Closing his eyes he floated on his back, arms moving lazily from time to time. The temptation of staying there for hours was growing with every minute. It was so pleasant! He had not done this in almost a year and he missed it greatly!

Diving again, he searched blindly for the bottom, arms outstretched, legs and feet moving in a precise rhythm. Despite having enough air, his lungs started to hurt a bit after a short while. The pressure and tiredness were taking a toll on him. He ignored them and kept going deeper and deeper. The bottom was nowhere to find, but the water was getting colder, the air running out. He ignored the sensation, putting more force towards his goal. A small ray of light breached the darkness over his shoulder. He blinked confused, dizziness creeping in on him.

Something strong and slim coiled around his middle pulling him upwards. Looking around, the light was dancing in a strange pattern. Instincts kicked it. Increasing the heat in his hands he grabbed the thing, trying to free himself. It didn’t bulge. He tried again, higher and higher. It was an arm connected to a body. Shit!

Two heads emerged from the restless waves. Both had slightly tanned skin, one’s hair was cut short, the other’s was long and flowing. One was freezing, teeth chattering, the other was caught between confusion and remorse. Bright blue eyes met black.

‘I- id – a - aho!’ Takeru grumble stuttered, swimming towards the beach. His moves were difficult and slow, pain was running up and down his body. Teeth sank into cold numbed lips. The salt water was making everything worse. With every move of his hands the flashlight was nowhere to be seen. ‘W- What were you t - thinking?’ he asked as soon as they were back on the dry sand and in warm trousers. The pain subsided a little, the burns not deep enough to bleed. ‘What w- were you thinking?’ he asked again, throwing him the lighter. His tone was flat, anger hidden under layers and layers of indifference. Cold was chipping away at his control.

Vincent stared at him, not giving an answer. Not immediately anyway. He finished getting dressed, put the harness on Schilo and handed Takeru his own shirt and coat together with the leather glove for Hiei. ‘I was swimming, trying to reach the bottom’ he shrugged touching his friend’s arm, a green, heeling glow at the tip of his fingers.

Takeru looked at him, analyzing, running the words through his head, sniffing out for lies. Power coated the words, searching, separating, extracting the tone in which they were spoken and the emotions behind it, deconstructing that even further, until the truth stood out clear in his mind, Vince’s truth.

They had been here before, a few times, and afterwards he had spent hours upon hours in an uncomfortable plastic or wooden chair in a hospital’s waiting room. ‘You’re not lying’ he sighed, a small twinge of relief in his voice.

‘No, I’m not.’

Their eyes met, unspoken apologies, reassurances, admissions and fears passing between them. Neither needed to hear them to know they existed. Vincent broke the contact first by moving his head towards the hotel. As he was walking the sand stuck to his feet bringing back childhood memories of long summer days. They walked in comfortable silence. Neither was a talker. They had Ingrid for that. When the older woman was not there they made do snuggling in the other’s quietness.

In their room, Takeru went first to shower, leaving Vincent to clean the animals and open the two windows, welcoming the storm. As he came out of his own, brief shower he found his friend sitting on the bed, dressed in oversized gray pajamas, damp hair pulled up in a bun, a jar of soothing muscle reliever in hand. It was almost dark outside, lightning, thunder and wind chasing each other.

‘The gods are having fun?’ Vincent asked, rubbing the water out of his short black hair.

Belief in the Shinto gods had been a part of the Matsuda family for countless generations. Takeru was not as devoted as the rest of his relatives, but he did hold the god of wind, Fujin and the thunder and lightning god Raiden in high regard. Few people outside his family knew about this aspect of his life, labeling his fascination with storms as just another quirk. Another strange thing to look at and gossip about.

‘Or sex’ he shrugged, vaguely amused, breathing in the clean humid air coming through the window.

‘Or both.’ There was a knowing smile on his face, blue eyes glinting. The invitation was missing however. They’d had their own fun, from time to time along the years.

Vincent took the jar reading the label. It was one of those ointments that heated up after application. It felt nice, smelled pleasant and made him sleepy. He took off his sleeping T-shirt, laying on the clean white sheets. Two red wrapping towels were stacked next to the pillow.

Takeru straddled his legs. Vincent was well built, his back muscles beautifully defined. This white scars took over most of the skin, the worst ones on the nape. That area was out of boundaries. The cream was think between his palms, but it was absorbed quickly, Vincent visibly relaxing under his touch. His breathing slower, more stable. He was working in precise sections, coating everything in an even, thin layer. It took quite some time, and he had to bend forward more than once to care for his upper arms as well. By the time he reached his lower back, Vincent had fallen asleep, light snores escaping thin parted lips. Takeru kept working, fingers playing over the skin as if it was they keys of a well-tuned piano.

The towels were soft and thick. Putting them around the sleeping man without waking him up was not easy. Vincent was a light sleeper, but Takeru had a lot of practice. He knew where to press, to guide his body. Vincent feeling comfortable around him helped a lot. The covers were left unused, unneeded. He settled beside him with a manga, not actually paying attention to the black and white panels or the strings of kanji that formed the dialogue. Instead he kept watch over his friend, ready to intervene in case of a nightmare or worse a night terrors.

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[messengerhermes]

I think it's important to note, that most creative writing classes focus on "literary fiction" aka the nebulous category that allows pretentious bastards to feel like they're cool and creating/reading works of "Cultural Merit" unlike the rest of us peons. Likewise, learning from western literary cannon usually means we're reading much older texts, that likely have been published multiple times over, or translated from their original languages and thus reformatted. (I'm looking at you, ancient Dickens texts and your run-on sentences) Language evolves, and so does how we read and write. But schools lag behind in terms of teaching. I write a lot of long-ass introspective passages in my work, but I try to break them up to keep the reader from drowning. If you're reading OP's example and having a hard time figuring out how they made choices to break things up/ the camera angle concept isn't hitting for you, here are some cues I'm picking up from a read through: 1. Isolate the dialogue to let it stand on its own

2. Break out the actions on their own (ie, "He looks in the mirror," "He takes out the...," "He angles it..." all are their own paragraphs) 3. Separate out each thought/memory into their own paragraph (ie the "...he's tired" paragraph is all one thought train clumped together about the character's exhaustion and feelings about others seeing through his veneer. The paragraph that follows this switches to the character remembering an encounter with a friend. These are two separate ideas and so are two separate paragraphs)

4. Dramatic beats. This passage ends up reading poetically because the paragraphs grow from a single word into several sentences and then taper back down into a single word. Play around with sentence length and see how it impacts things.

A rule I've learned is stacking short sentences together reads as a faster or more jarring sequence, while longer sentences slow things down and create a smoother flow.

So, a fight scene may be better served by a bunch of short staccato sentences. While a restful evening beside a fire may do better with longer sentences sprinkled with a few short ones. Play with the rhythm of your writing.

5. Trust Your Audience. When I was first writing fiction, I felt like I had to fill in every detail in terms of thought and action or I'd lose my readers, but actually letting people fill in the blanks can create space for a lot more emotion to work its way into your text.

In this passage, having "snip" stand on its own to indicate the first lock of hair being cut hits us more than if OP had written, "The scissors snap shut with a 'snip' and a lock of hair hands loose between his fingertips." Sometimes less is more.

Also, random personal tip: Read your writing aloud. Note where you pause for breath. Try making those spots paragraph breaks. Or note where your brain gets lost in a paragraph and see how you might be able to break that passage up into smaller paragraphs. If I find myself getting bored or confused reading my work aloud, that's a cue for me to make cuts or rework a passage. After all, if I'm bored reading it, that can be an indication my readers will be too.

Whole-heartedly BEGGING writers to unlearn everything schools taught you about how long a paragraph is. If theres a new subject, INCLUDING ACTIONS, theres a new paragraph. A paragraph can be a single word too btw stop making things unreadable